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What is Essential? 



BY 

GEORGE ARTHUR ANDREWS 



NEW YORK 

THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. 

PUBLISHERS 



^1^^"1 

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Copyright, 1910, by Thomas Y. CroweU & Co. 



Published September, 1910 



S)CI.AV68073 



pvtfatt 




wo travelers were one day 
occupying the same seat in a 
railway train. One of them 
was a very youthful student of 
the "New Theology." The 
other was a confirmed Roman 
Catholic. As the two journeyed they fell into 
conversation, and soon from matters incon- 
sequential they passed to a serious considera- 
tion of the nature of the Christian religion. 
The discussion waxed long and eloquent, but 
it ended precisely where it began. The "New 
Theologian" left the car convinced that the 
Catholic was a hopeless bigot, while the Catho- 
lic departed in full assurance that the "New 
Theologian" was a willful heretic. Yet both 
men were followers of the same Christ. The 
inability to understand each other was due 
solely to the different view points from which 
they interpreted the religion of Christ. 
Herein lies the reason for the prevalence of 
[v] 



ptttatt 

seemingly contradictory conceptions concern- 
ing the nature of the Christian religion, — in 
unsympathetic view points. The view points 
of the traditionalist and of the rationalist, of the 
Catholic and of the Protestant, of the con- 
servative and of the radical, of the conformist 
and of the independent, of the seer and of the 
doer, — these view points are mutually exclu- 
sive. Therefore the conceptions derived from 
the view points appear at times hopelessly at 
variance. 

And herein lies the reason for an inquiry con- 
cerning the essentials of our religion, — in the 
need, among the variety of changing and con- 
tradictory conceptions of religion, for the dis- 
cernment of that which is necessarily involved 
in its nature. This is the object of our search, 
the elemental, the vital, the very essence of the 
religion of Christ. 

This little book is more of an inquiry than an 
answer. It is a suggestion and not an assertion. 
It will be some time before the very bed-rock 
bottom of the essence of our religion is reached 
by the inquiring mind. Perhaps it can never be 
[vi] 



ptttact 

reached. Be that as it may, here the attempt is 
to make but a few soundings, in the hope that 
some human craft, perhaps in danger of re- 
ligious shipwreck, may be piloted amid the 
dangers of unsatisfying speculations to a place 
of firm anchorage. 

The author gratefully acknowledges his in- 
debtedness to those friends who have helped 
him in his work by the criticism of his manu- 
script. Especially does he wish to thank 
Professor William Newton Clarke of Colgate 
University, for valuable literary and theological 
suggestions. 



[vii] 



Contents 



CHAP, PAGE 

I. Who is the Essential Christian ? 

1. The Ascetic Conception 3 

2. The Conformist Conception 7 

3. "Back to Christ" 11 

4. The Imitation of Jesus 15 
II. What is the Essential Christian Creed? 

1. A Popular Demand of the Day 23 

2. The Unessential Christian Belief 27 

3. The Creed of Christ 32 

4. The Omissions from Christ's Creed 37 

5. The Essential Creed of the Christian 40 

III. What is the Essential Christian Experience ? 

1. The Need of Personal Experience 47 

2. A Prevalent Misapprehension 51 

3. The Religious Experience of Jesus 57 

4. The Interference of Sin 66 

5. The Essential Experiences of the Christian 73 

IV. What is the Essential Christian Revelation ? 

1. The Bible; its Accepted Preeminence 83 

2. The Bible; its Fundamental Helpfulness 87 

3. The Revelation in Christ 90 

4. The Revelation in Humanity 94 

5. The True Test of All Inspired Revelation 97 
V. What is the Essential Christian Church? 

1. The Historic Church 105 

2. The Church, a Means to an End 109 

[ix] 



Contents 



CHAP, PAGE 

3. The Distinctive Function of the Church 114 

4. The Assistance of Church Membership 119 

5. The Value of Pubhc Worship 123 
VI. What is the Essential Christian Activity ? 

1. Christianity and Personal Salvation 131 

2. Christianity and Personal Sacrifice 137 

3. Christianity and Philanthropy 143 

4. The Quest for the Kingdom of God 147 



[^1 



WW t0 tmntiaU 



[I] 



CHAPTER FIRST 



Wi^o iiEj ti^e tmntial Ci^tWan? 




Sec. 1. The Ascetic Conception 

N English writer a few years 
ago attempted to describe the 
follower of Christ in a novel 
which he called "The Chris- 
tian." The title was a mis- 
nomer. The stern, joyless, 
fanatical John Storm was no more like the 
Christian than John the Baptist was like Jesus 
Christ. But in fashioning his hero after the 
likeness of Christ's forerunner instead of in the 
likeness of Christ himself. Hall Caine was but 
following a custom which has been more or less 
prevalent for nearly twenty centuries. 
It is indeed true that modern asceticism is of a 
much milder type than that which characterized 
mediaeval Christianity. At first sight, it may 
seem that the family man, who to-day denies 
himself meat only on Fridays, can claim very 
[3] 



^]^at ijs CjSjsential 



little resemblance to the man of the past cen- 
turies, who on all the days of his companionless 
existence partook only of bread and water. 
But though the practice of self-denial is now 
somewhat less rigorous, the motive for the 
self-denial is too often fundamentally the same. 
It is a self-denial which has its purpose only in 
a form of selfishness. The celibate monk lived 
on bread and water not for any good that his 
abstinence might bring to others, but only for 
the eternal good he hoped to attain for himself. 
All abstinences for like purposes must be like- 
wise characterized. They are selfish, and 
selfishness in any form is unchristian. 
Yet the ascetic type of the Christian is with us 
wherever we turn. There are men and women 
everywhere who separate themselves from so- 
called worldly indulgences and amusements, 
who are wont to practice only the passive vir- 
tues and to obey only the prohibitive com- 
mandments. Their motive is the same as that 
which prompted the monastic to deny himself 
domestic felicity and physical sustenance. They 
deny themselves now in order that by and by 
[4] 



they may save themselves. So prevalent even 
to-day is this ascetic conception of Christianity 
which has its motive in self-seeking, that we 
find preachers and evangelists still urging men 
and women to forego certain social amusements 
and personal indulgences for fear of what will 
happen to them if they do not, or for the 
reward that may come to them if they do. 
Young people, when asked to avow the life of 
Christ, inevitably inquire first what they must 
give up to be Christians, and too often are they 
taught to weigh the cost of a demanded denial 
only against the value of a promised reward. 
"You must give up this or that self-indulgence 
and pleasure," they are told, ''but you will ob- 
tain in return peace in this world and in the 
world to come eternal life." 
Now, if the one purpose of the Christian life 
were to save one's self, this ascetic conception of 
Christian living would be tenable. Assuming 
this purpose, monasteries and nunneries would 
follow as the legitimate and logical conse- 
quences, and the mortification of the flesh 
would become indeed an admirable virtue. If 
[5] 



^i^at (is CjSiEiential 



personal salvation into heaven be the one su- 
preme purpose of the Christian rehgion, not 
only must we highly commend the '' Christian" 
of Mr. Caine's imagination, but also must we 
commend all living Christians who have denied 
themselves any pleasure of this world in order 
that they may attain the bliss of the world to 
come. 

But this selfish object is not and cannot be the 
purpose of the true follower of the unselfish 
Christ. Personal salvation is only one of the 
results of Christian living, — never its purpose. 
He who would save his life must lose it, said 
Jesus. And the only way to attain salvation, 
he declared, was not to seek it as an end in 
itself, but to find it as a by-product of self- 
forgetful service. 

One may be an ascetic and still be a Christian, 
but his asceticism does not make him a Chris- 
tian. The essence of Christianity does not lie 
in the self-denial of him who hopes thereby to 
gain something more desirable for himself. 
One cannot condemn another for such self- 
denial. It is every man's privilege to forego a 
[6] 



i 



pleasure to-day for the enjoyment of an an- 
ticipated greater pleasure to-morrow. We all 
do that, but we do it because we are prudent, — 
not because we are Christians. 
The Christian virtue of self-denial is the denial 
of self for the sake of the welfare of someone 
else. Only such self-denial should be dignified 
by the name of sacrifice. Only such can prop- 
erly be said to inhere in essential Christianity. 

Sec. 2, The Conformist Conception 

A man of a somewhat cynical turn of mind 
once made the statement that so far as he had 
observed, Christianity was but another name 
for conformity. By this remark he evidently 
meant to assert that the Christian profession 
was not a matter of inner principles but of 
outer practices. 

He had observed, it may be, that those who had 
professed to be followers of Christ and those 
who had made no such profession were appar- 
ently actuated by the same life-purposes. He 
doubtless had seen professed Christians who 
were quick-tempered and unforgiving. He had 
[7] 



WW i^ €jsi8enttal 



seen those who were proud and arrogant, 
opinionated and bigoted. He had seen pro- 
fessed Christians in business who manifested a 
selfish and grasping disposition, perhaps even 
those who stooped to base and immoral methods 
to increase their personal profit. 
It is possible that he had observed that pro- 
fessed Christians, even in their organized Chris- 
tian activities, were not always actuated by the 
spirit of humility and of gentle forbearance. 
It is barely conceivable that he had seen church 
members wrangling for positions of honor in 
the very Church of God, and quarreling with 
their brethren in Christ over matters of per- 
sonal opinion and of personal preference. 
Yet this man had likewise observed that all 
these proud, bigoted, selfish, quarreling Chris- 
tians were conformists. They practiced certain 
Christian forms and participated in certain 
Christian ceremonies. For instance, they went 
to church on Sunday morning. They repeated 
together certain formulas and articles of faith. 
They bowed reverently during public prayer. 
In some churches they responded audibly to the 
[8] 



prayers with commendable fervency. They 
listened politely to the rhetorical sentences of 
cultured preachers. But after the weekly serv- 
ice was over they went back to their homes to 
take up again their schemes of business and 
political trickery, or to renew their struggle for 
social supremacy. 

Though this picture is happily somewhat over- 
drawn, the man is perhaps excusable for his 
cynical inference. In these days of the popu- 
larity of the Christian religion, conformity to 
accepted Christian customs has become indeed 
a serious menace to vital Christianity. There 
is no temptation more insidious than the temp- 
tation to allow the habitual to become the 
formal. The acts which we perform with re- 
current regularity are always those acts which 
are in most danger of losing their vitality. This 
is true whether the acts in their significance be 
domestic, industrial, social or religious. The 
home-maker is in danger from the treadmill 
of routine. The clerk in the office is in im- 
minent peril of becoming a lifeless machine. 
The lady on her customary round of social calls 
[9] 



WW i^ CjSjsetttial 



is extremely liable to make the calls in a listless 
and perfunctory manner. We need not, there- 
fore, be surprised if the Christian in his re- 
current religious duties is in danger of deterio- 
rating into a formalist. 

For indeed the expression of the Christian life, 
as well as the expression of any other phase 
of human life, demands its routine of duties. 
There must be Christian habits as well as 
business and social habits. The habitual con- 
formist to accepted Christian customs is no 
more to be condemned than he who conforms 
his business methods to the conventional busi- 
ness customs of his day. 

But when thus we admit the necessity for regu- 
lar Christian customs and therefore the ad- 
visability of habitual Christian conformity, we 
do not therefore admit the necessity of a loss 
to Christian vitality. In the recurrent Christian 
ceremonies there is indeed danger of such a 
loss ; sadly must we confess that many in their 
conformity have seemed to meet with loss; but 
the loss is not necessary. When a man goes to 
his habitual business equipped with the purpose 
[10] 



that through the daily routine he will attain 
success, his conformity to business customs will 
not endanger his business achievement. So 
when a man is determined to let recurrent 
Christian observances be to him an expression 
of his purpose to succeed in Christian living, 
that man is in no serious danger of losing the 
vitality of his religion. 

Our cynical friend, then, was wrong in his 
excusable inference. Christianity is not con- 
formity. At its worst, conformity may become 
a substitute for Christianity. At its very best, 
it can only be considered as one expression of 
Christianity. No man is a Christian because 
he conforms to prescribed Christian customs. 
If he does conform, it must be only because 
through the habitual participation in Christian 
observances he hopes the better to succeed in 
Christian living. 

Sec. 3. "Back to Christ'' 

A decade or more ago the cry " Back to Christ" 
became the shibboleth of many Christian 
thinkers, some of whom were possessed of 

[11] 



I^l^at t0 Csusenttal 



temperaments distinctly iconoclastic. As used 
by these the cry became the signal for the 
attempted disparagement of historic Chris- 
tianity. The extremists of this type of thinkers 
would allow no necessary growth from the seed 
planted by Jesus. They insisted that his reli- 
gion must be considered as having sprung 
from him full grown and completely armed, 
just as Pallas Athene is fabled to have sprung 
from the head of Zeus. Of course, no writer 
said exactly this in words, but this is a log- 
ical inference from their destructive asser- 
tions. 

When we demand that the Christian of to-day 
shall be no different from the contemporary 
follower of the historic Jesus of Nazareth, we 
make the demand that Christianity of all of 
God's forces shall be the only force which shall 
not be subject to His universal law of develop- 
ment. When we make this one exception for 
our religion, we make of our religion the one 
thing in all God's world which is not only un- 
natural but which is inert and lifeless. If 
Christianity be a living thing, it must be a 
[12] 



W})0 tjs ti^e Q^jSjsential €i^ti^tian 

growing thing. If it be divine, it must be 
capable of development. 

The cry "Back to Christ" when taken thus to 
preclude all development from Christ, would 
lead us to illogical and impossible conclusions, 
and to most absurd practices. "Back to 
Christ" would be back to Jewry. If we should 
do exactly as Christ did, not only should we 
travel bareheaded and clothe our feet in san- 
dals, but we should observe the Jewish Sab- 
bath, and worship in the synagogue. We should 
have for our sacred books only the Law and 
the Prophets, for "Back to Christ" literally 
interpreted involves the loss to us of the re- 
ligious value of all the books of the New Testa- 
ment, except indeed the biographies contained 
in the Gospels. If we should go back to Christ 
in this literal sense, we should go back of the 
Church, back of all forms of organized Chris- 
tianity, back of all attempts at systematic 
Christian teaching, back to a time of an unco- 
ordinated individualism, from which, deprived 
of its organized and historic development, there 
would result only anarchy and chaos. 
[13] 



^i^at tss (BiSisenttal 



But, fortunately, we cannot thus go back to 
him. Try as hard as we may, we cannot take 
the fruit of two thousand years of Christian 
growth and make of it only the seed from 
which the fruit has developed. We cannot do 
that, any more than we can cause the apple in 
our hand to dwindle to the tiny black seed 
which held the germ of the apple's life. We 
may not claim that the fruit of Christianity is 
yet fully grown. The apple may be small and 
unripe, but it is nevertheless something diflFer- 
ent from its germinal seed, something different 
and something more. That is because it is the 
fruition of a living germ, and both the germ 
and the process of growth are divine. 
Yet ''Back to Christ" in a sense we must all go 
for our conception of his religion. Back to 
him, not for the fruit of Christianity, but for 
its germ. Back to him must we go for the 
eternal life-giving principle which, through the 
sunlight of God's favor and the raindrops of 
the tears of many sacrifices, has grown until it 
has civilized nations, aye, and which shall grow 
until "all the kingdoms of the world have be- 
[14] 



come the Kingdom of our Lord and Savior 
Jesus Christ." 

For though we must expect our fundamental 
Christianity of to-day to be something other 
and more than the Christianity of two thousand 
years ago, there can be in our developed and 
developing religion only that whose embryo 
was in Christ. The germinal seed of our 
Christian religion is Christ himself. It is not 
any teaching of Christ, much less is it any 
doctrine about Christ, but Christ in his very 
life and character. All, therefore, that inheres 
in the essential nature of Christianity must 
have its origin in Christ and must find its ex- 
pression in a likeness to Christ. When we 
have understood what likeness to Christ in- 
volves in our present day, we have understood 
the very essence of Christianity. When we 
have applied that knowledge to our own lives, 
we have become Christians. 

Sec. 4. The Imitation of Jesus 

Some attempt to imitate Christ has never been 

absent from historic Christianity. Too often, 

[15] 



WW tjs t^^mtial 



however, the imitation of him has been literal 
instead of spiritual, an imitation of the human 
setting of his life instead of an appropriation of 
the divine spirit that was within him. 
Jesus was poor, so certain monks took upon 
themselves the vow of poverty. Jesus never 
married, so churchmen became celibates. Jesus 
washed his disciples' feet, so the Pope annually 
washes the feet of twelve dirty beggars. Jesus 
was baptized in early manhood, and we have a 
whole denomination who make adult baptism 
the basis of their denominational separation. 
Jesus is reported to have healed the sick with 
the touch of his hand, and behold we are sur- 
rounded by myriads of quack practitioners, 
Christian Scientists and faith-healers, who deny 
the efficacy of every other school of healing but 
their own, and who eschew all the remedies 
provided in God's world and discovered by 
God's children. 

Jesus shared the popular beliefs of his day. 
He believed in demonology, in the existence of 
a personal devil, and in the control of human 
individuals by the devil's emissaries. There- 
[16] 



fore we have a page in the history of our own 
country sullied by the superstition of witchcraft. 
Therefore, too, we have even to this present day 
those who persist in attributing the deviltry of 
their own meannesses to the subjugation of an 
omnipotent arch enemy of the omnipotent 
God. 

But no attempt to imitate the exact things 
which Jesus did, or to share his first-century 
beliefs, can be called essentially Christian, for 
none are in very essence Christlike. The 
reality of my likeness to my great-grandfather 
does not consist in my wearing knee breeches 
and adorning my head with a peruke. Nor 
does it consist in my refusal to accept the 
verities of science which have been demon- 
strated since his day. I am like my ancestor 
because in me there is something of the spirit 
that was in him, because I can appreciate his 
ideals and life-purpose, because I have like 
aspirations and similar methods of endeavor. 
But my aspirations and my methods of work 
I must apply to twentieth-century conditions. 
The very development of the Christian religion 
[17] 



WW ij8 Cisjsential 



has so modified and ennobled the conditions 
of Hfe that no man can claim to be Christlike 
to-day who does only what Jesus did twenty 
centuries ago. To be like Christ, he must 
apply the spirit of Christ to the century in 
which he himself is living. 
Some unsatisfactory attempts have been made 
of late years to imagine what Christ would be 
like if he should come to Chicago or to Boston. 
The simple truth is, that in such an instance 
Christ would outwardly be much like the ordi- 
nary American citizen of to-day. He would 
believe the truths of the twentieth century just 
as in his time he believed the truths of the first 
century. He would accept the conclusions of 
modern science. He would use the help of 
modern discoveries. The motive of his life 
would be the same; its manner of expression 
would be different. He would still alleviate 
human suffering, he might even cure the sick, 
but probably he would do it to-day by the ap- 
plication of a knowledge of physiology, psy- 
chology and hygiene rather than by the per- 
formance of miracles. He would still forgive 
[18] 



sin, but he would not appear to explain sin as 
the work of a personal devil. 
If Christ should come to America to-day he 
would not be crucified, nor would he be put 
to death by any more modern and refined 
method of capital punishment. He would not 
be put to death at all. He would not suffer 
even the martyrdom of active hatred. He 
would suffer to-day from passive indifference. 
Nowhere in all the length and breadth of this 
tolerant land would men pick up stones to cast 
at him, but many would pass him by with 
averted faces in their selfish pursuit of pleasure 
and of profit. 

Here, too, in the sufferings of Christ must we 
separate the essential, eternal element from the 
form in which it was clothed in the age in 
which he lived. It was not the Roman cross 
which made Christ suffer; it was the sin of the 
people which brought him to the cross. It was 
not the hatred of his followers which made him 
a "man of sorrows and acquainted with grief"; 
it was the selfishness which caused them to hate 
him who was pure and loving. He would have 
[19] 



Wi^at tjs €mmtial 



"gathered them to himself" and they ''would 
not." That unwillingness of selfishness caused 
the cross in the first century. In the twentieth 
century it would cause only indifference. But 
the suffering of the Savior would be the same 
so long as men "would not." 
Imagining thus a different setting to the life of 
Christ, though our imagination must prove 
hopelessly inadequate, we nevertheless find 
help in differentiating the actual experiences of 
Jesus from the essential spirit which actuated 
him. Thus, the actual poverty of his condition 
was incidental because he happened to be born 
into the family of a poor carpenter; but his 
humility of spirit was essential. His baptism 
by John in the Jordan was incidental, the mode 
of his consecration being determined by the 
time and the place; but the purpose of his 
baptism, to manifest his consecration to his 
life-work, was essential. The form in which 
temptation was presented to him was inci- 
dental; the power to resist, essential. The 
method of his ministry was occasioned by the 
times in which he lived, the miracles, therefore, 
[20] 



may be considered incidental; but the loving 
purpose of the ministry was essential. So, the 
physical suffering of the tragedy of Calvary 
was incidental, occasioned by the malignant 
hatred of the scribes and Pharisees and the 
cruel cowardice of a self-seeking Roman gov- 
ernor; but the spiritual suffering, sorrow for 
unrepentant sinners, was essential. 
To be like Christ, then, is to be humble in 
spirit, to be consecrated to service, to be strong 
to resist temptations, to be patient and sympa- 
thetic in ministry, and to be sorry for unre- 
pentant sinners. These Christlike qualities the 
Christian of to-day must apply to the condi- 
tions of to-day. 

The possession of these qualities will lead him 
to self-denial, but the self-denial will be for 
the purpose of helping others instead of saving 
himself. 

The possession of these qualities will pre- 
sumably lead him into conformity with some 
prevalent type of Christian observance, a con- 
formity wherein he may publicly acknowledge 
his consecration to service, and whereby he 
[21] 



Wi^at ijs €$^mtial 



may make his service as efficacious as possible. 
But his conformity will be an expression of his 
Christlikeness. It cannot in itself cause his 
Christlikeness. 

The possession of these qualities in the present 
stage of the development of Christ's religion 
will compel the Christian to do certain things 
which were not thought of in Christ's time. It 
may force him to believe some things which 
were unbelievable before Christ's leaven had 
leavened the mass of the world's ignorance. 
But the spirit which vitalizes his beliefs and ac- 
tuates his deeds will be in him the fruit of the 
germinal spirit of Christ. 

The essential Christian is one who strives to be 
actuated by the spirit of Christ. 



[22] 



CHAPTER SECOND 

CreeD? 




Sec. 1. A Popular Demand of the Day 

T is quite the fashion in these 
days to belittle any definite 
form of Christian belief. 
Creed subscription has been 
relegated to the realms of ob- 
livion not only by the outside 
critics of the religion of Jesus, but even by some 
of its most prominent exponents. Give us a 
practical religion, not a speculative philosophy, 
is a demand of the day. And in answer to this 
demand, episcopates and presbyteries are over- 
hauling their ancient formulas of faith, while 
some independent churches have already filed 
away the creeds of their fathers, substituting 
therefor simple declarations of Christian pur- 
pose, and short covenants of church loyalty. 
This popular demand for a practical religion 
[23] 



^i^at tjs €jSi8ent(al 



is expressive of a particular stage of the develop- 
ment of the religion of Christ. Indeed it is 
one of the signs which seem to indicate the 
beginning of a new epoch of Christian activ- 
ity. If one were to attempt to describe in a 
word the manifestation of the Christian religion 
which is characteristic of the twentieth cen- 
tury, one would use the word philanthropy. 
In former less busy and more philosophic 
centuries, Christians were naturally interested 
in a desire to understand God. Those were 
the days of theology. But in this practical, 
busy age, speculative explorations into the 
realm of the abstruse and intangible have 
ceased to be of paramount interest. To-day, 
instead of asking, "What can I believe about 
God?" men are asking, "What can I do for 
men?" 

This is a change of interest in the religion of 
Christ, but by no means a lack of interest. It 
is a change which we should naturally expect, 
if we but remembered that the religion of 
Jesus, like everything else in God's world, is 
a development, and if we gave due weight to 
[24] 



W\^at i0 tl^e tmntial CteeD 

the modifying truth that the development of 
religion must run parallel to the development 
of society. 

The century just opening to us is a century 
which is marked by intense activity along all 
lines of human interest. It will not be a great 
literary age. It will be an age impatient of 
abstruse thinking and of philosophical reason- 
ing. The brains of this century will be devoted 
for the most part to the pursuit of tangible 
achievements. Scientists will turn their atten- 
tion more and more towards discoveries which 
shall be not merely interesting but useful. 
Writers and lecturers will deal more exclu- 
sively with themes that are closely connected 
with the everyday work of a busy world. Phi- 
losophers and essayists will be practical utili- 
tarians, at least in what they contribute to the 
world's thought. But by far the most of the 
brain effort of the next century will be directed 
towards industry and commerce, government 
and finance, civic and social improvements. 
Since the universal trend of the times is toward 
activity, the trend of the religion of Jesus 
[25] 



wm i^ Cjsjsential 



must be towards a Christlike control of that 
activity. Preachers, evangelists and Christian 
reformers in this century must tell men how 
they may act like Christ rather than merely 
what they must think about Christ. Churches 
must increasingly inspire their members to the 
ministry of the poor, the sick, and the un- 
fortunate, and they must not be content if they 
only furnish a place of worship for their own 
supporters. If clergymen and church officers 
will but heed the signs of the times, the com- 
ing years will be productive of great progress 
toward the Christian solution of the problems 
of industry and politics, towards the betterment 
of the condition of the poor, and towards the 
decrease of the selfishness of the rich. It will 
be a century made notable by the successful 
operation of many forms of Christian charity, 
and by the development of new enterprises for 
the Christianization of the world. 
Every man, then, who is interested in the ad- 
vance of the Kingdom of God in the world 
should hail the cry for the revision or the abo- 
lition of church creeds as the herald of new 
[26] 



WW i^ t^t (B^^mtial Creed 

opportunities for Christian activity. For, be 
sure of this, there would be no such demand 
if men were indifferent to the Christian reHgion. 
It is because they are practically and truly re- 
ligious that they are impatient of the repetition 
of old formulas which have in themselves no 
necessary connection with Christian living. The 
demand of the day is not for the abolition of any 
belief which may be necessary to rational Chris- 
tian activity, but it is a demand most insistent 
and imperative for the abolition of all beliefs that 
are not necessarily involved in the very essence 
of the religion of Jesus. 

Sec. 2. The Unessential Christian Belief 

The unessential Christian belief is that belief 
of the intellect which has no direct bearing upon 
the conduct of the life. In other words, it is 
the belief which is not convertible into action. 
If in itself it can neither make a man better, 
nor inspire his effort, then it is unessential. It 
may be true, but it is not vital. It may be rea- 
sonable and logical, but it is not fundamental. 
Christianity is the art of living, not a mere 
[27] 



Wm i^ cB^^entfal 



science of life. The Christian, therefore, 
must be considered only as an artist. As an 
artist, he needs a beHef in certain practical 
verities. But he can leave to the scientist all 
philosophical speculations which may seek 
to account for those verities. 
For illustration, suppose a man is set to till 
the soil. If he is to be a successful agricul- 
turist, he must believe certain fundamental 
truths concerning the rotation of the seasons 
and the fertility of the soil. Did he not be- 
lieve these verities, as a rational man he would 
not plow his field nor plant his seed; hence 
he could not reap his harvest. But he does not 
need to understand all the scientific explanations 
of atmospheric pressure, of climatic changes, 
and of the chemical properties of the soil. He 
needs to believe that the seed will grow, else he 
will not plant it, but he need not be compelled 
to believe all the speculative theories which try 
to account for the seed's inherent vitality. 
If we accept this analogy, we are ready for a 
general statement concerning the Christian's 
beliefs that are unessential. The Christian, 
[28] 



since he is a rational being, must believe that 
the seed which he drops will grow. He must 
believe that a good deed will have a good influ- 
ence, or he will not try to perform good deeds. 
He must believe that a life of sacrifice is more 
noble than a life of selfishness, or he will not 
try to live such a life. But to be successful 
in living Christ's life, he does not need to be- 
lieve the theologian's scientific theories con- 
cerning the reason why good deeds bear good 
fruit; nor yet need he accept either the oldest 
or the newest theological explanation of the 
origin of love. The explanation may be cor- 
rect; that is, some explanation may be correct. 
Evidently all explanations cannot be true in 
all their details, for many of them are inher- 
ently contradictory. But whether the theo- 
logical explanation be true or not, is now be- 
side the question. It is not vital. Just as the 
verity of sunlight is independent of all astro- 
nomical explanations concerning the origin of 
the sun, so the verity of the life of Christian 
love is independent of all theological explana- 
tions of the nature of that love. 
[29] 



3^]^at tjs Cjsjsenttal 



It does not follow, therefore, that theology has 
no reason for existence. That would be like 
the affirmation that astronomy and chemistry 
are unneeded sciences. But theological specu- 
lation is only for the Christian man of science. 
The Christian practitioner need accept no par- 
ticular dogma of speculative theology. He need 
believe only the verities which he can convert 
into action and which, therefore, alone can af- 
fect the cultivation of his character. 
Should one attempt to enumerate the specific 
doctrines of the Church that are thus to be 
classified as unessential, he would surely be 
severely criticised. In prudence, it would be 
much safer to leave to each individual the ap- 
plication of the general principle which has here 
been stated. At the risk, however, of adverse 
criticism, for the sake both of clearness and 
of comprehensiveness, the application of the 
principle must be made somewhat specific. 
If the proposition be true that Christ is the 
vital principle of the Christian religion, and 
that essential Christianity is Christlikeness, we 
should not hesitate to deduce from this prop- 
[30] 



osition the following corollary relating to the 
Christian belief. The Christian's essential be- 
lief is that which has grown from Christ. And, 
on the contrary, all beliefs are unessential which 
do not have their origin in him. 
This assertion does not mean to imply that 
there can be no enlargement and development 
of Christian doctrine. There must be growth. 
As Christianity itself is a development arising 
from the application of Christ's principle of 
life to succeeding conditions, so the truths of 
Christianity must be developed along parallel 
lines. There will always be a demand for a 
new theology to keep pace with the growth 
of vital religion. One may to-day reasonably 
believe truths about God and Christ, which 
Paul and Augustine did not believe, — but to 
be a Christian he need not believe any truth 
which has not grown naturally and inevitably 
from the truth that actuated Christ himself. 
The dogmas of theology which Jesus did not 
make the basis of his life may safely be con- 
sidered as unnecessary to the foundation of 
the Christian's life. 

[31] 



Wi^at tjs Cjsjsetttfal 



Sec. 3. The Creed of Christ 
In the attempt to understand the essential 
verities of Christ's religion very much has been 
said and written concerning what Jesus taught 
others to beheve, but too Httle has ever been 
suggested concerning what Jesus himself be- 
lieved in its relation to the demanded Christian 
belief. Yet since Jesus, however we may 
interpret him theologically, must have been 
in his earthly Ufe mentally akin to all other 
men, he must as a rational being have taught 
certain things only because first he believed 
certain truths. He must have acted, not from 
impulse, but from reasonable motive. Behind 
all his works and his deeds there must have 
been actuating convictions. Being thus like 
all mankind a man of reasoning motives, his 
character cannot be adequately explained with- 
out reference to the faith in him which deter- 
mined his character. 

What was the vital creed of Jesus .^ What 
reason had he for the early consecration of him- 
self to the service of mankind.^ What faith 
empowered his resistance of temptation, and 
[32] 



enabled his patient, sympathetic ministry for 
others ? What conviction sustained him in ago- 
nizing Gethsemane and on sacrificial Calvary ? 
Can we answer such questions as these ? 
It is always hazardous to detach the isolated 
sayings of any man and to affirm that here he 
expresses his very self, that this is the man's 
deepest conviction. For we cannot really 
know any man's deepest convictions until we 
know the whole of his life. Perhaps perfectly 
to comprehend the inmost thoughts and the 
actuating motives of the Savior of men, would 
mean that we must know him as we can never 
know him from the meager, broken accounts 
of the Gospel narratives. Yet so much of 
himself has been revealed in these narratives 
that a sympathetic and unprejudiced student 
of the Gospels cannot fail to catch at least 
some glimpse of the actuating convictions of 
his life. 

Let the earnest seeker after truth turn again 
to the biographies of Jesus with the one pur- 
pose to discover the faith which actuated him, 
and he will find persisting throughout all the 
[33] 



I^i^at iss t^^mtial 



narrative of his life three controlling ideas. 
From the many passages which incorporate 
these ideas the following are selected because 
of their conciseness: 

" I must work the works of him that sent me." 
(John 9:4.) 

" The Son of man came to seek and to save that 
which was lost. " (Luke 19:10.) 
"From this time Jesus began to show his 
disciples that he must suffer many things." 
(Matt. 16:21.) 

The first two passages are the avowal of the 
purpose of his life; the last expresses his con- 
viction concerning the method by which the 
purpose was to be fulfilled. 
If one were searching for evidence concerning 
Christ's belief about matters which did not 
primarily influence his life, he would find it 
necessary to add to the passages which express 
these three fundamental and controlling ideas. 
One could discover words, for example, which 
seem to indicate his belief in his own preex- 
istence. Certainly it could be shown that he 
believed in his postexistence. The narratives 
[34] 



WW i^ t^t (Bmtntial CteeD 

contain some evidence that he believed in a time 
of final judgment, and in the separation of the 
good from the bad. Most assuredly, too, one 
could infer that Jesus believed in the Kingdom 
of God in the heart of the individual, and in the 
prevalence of the Kingdom in all the world. 
But these beliefs were not the primary, actuat- 
ing forces in his life. He neither said nor 
implied that he performed deeds of kindness, 
because he believed he had been with God or 
because he hoped to go to God. He did not 
heal the sick nor forgive sinners because he 
hoped thereby to win for himself a reward in 
the day of judgment. He did not teach that 
he gave himself "a ransom for many" simply 
because he hoped thus to hasten the advance 
of God's Kingdom in the world. He ministered 
to men, he loved men, he died for men, because 
he believed that he must work the works of God 
and because he believed that work was to save 
lost souls by sacrifice. 

From these passages, then, which reveal all of 

the belief of Jesus which primarily actuated 

his conduct, with some temerity but with rea- 

[35] 



^]^at iis CiSjeienttal 



sonable certainty we can deduce Christ's funda- 
mental creed. Let us arrange this creed in the 
form of Articles of Faith. 

THE CREED OF JESUS 

1. I believe that God is my Father, whose work 
I must do. 

2. I believe that man is my brother, whose 
soul I must save. 

3. I believe that I must serve my Father and 
save my brother by the sacrifice of love. 

Only three simple articles, but what a com- 
plete creed they make! The Fatherhood of 
God, the brotherhood of man, and the com- 
pulsion to sacrifice. 

But as we think of this attempt to formulate 
the creed of Jesus, we must remember that 
the compulsions it suggests were to him not 
the obligations of hateful duty but the joyful 
service of abundant love. It was his Father 
whose work he must do, the Father whose na- 
ture of purity and justice and truth he knew, 
the Father whom he loved and who loved him. 
It was his brother whom he must save, the 
[36] 



brother for whom his soul yearned, the brother 
whom he would "gather to himself as the hen 
gathereth her chickens under her wings." It 
was the sacrifice of love which he must per- 
form; not the obligation of stern necessity, 
but the sweet voluntary offering of love's one 
way of service. 

So we must think of the "must" in the creed 
of Christ only as the sweet compulsion of his 
filial, fraternal, unselfish love. And we shall 
not understand the creed in its full significance 
to the Savior himself until we flood it with the 
light of that ecstasy of voluntary offering which 
found its sublime expression in the earnest wish 
of his heart, " that my joy might remain in you." 

Sec. 4. The Omissions from Christ's Creed 

When one seeks honestly and earnestly for 
the actuating faith of Christ's life, he must be 
struck first of all by the many notable omis- 
sions from the creed that actuated his conduct 
and formed his character. Rev. John Watson, 
of revered memory, never made a truer obser- 
vation than when in his "Mind of the Master" 
[37] 



I^i^at iis (B&^mtial 



he said that "no one can fail to detect an 
immense diflFerence between the teachings of 
Christ and the creeds which have been made 
by Christians. ... It does not matter what 
creed you select, the Nicene, or the Westmin- 
ster Catechism, they all have a family likeness 
to each other, and a family unlikeness to the 
Sermon on the Mount. They deal with differ- 
ent subjects, and they move in a different at- 
mosphere." 

How lamentably true are these words! Ex- 
amine the creeds of men. They dwell, as 
Dr. Watson recalls, "on the relation of the 
three Persons in the Trinity; on the divine and 
human natures in the person of Jesus; on his 
miraculous birth through the power of the 
Holy Ghost; on the connection between his 
sacrifice and the divine law; on the nature of 
the penalty Christ paid, and its reference to 
the atonement; on the purposes of God re- 
garding the salvation of individuals, and the 
collision between the human will and the di- 
vine will; on the means by which grace is 
conveyed to the soul; on the mystery of the 

rss] 



^]^at fjs ti^e €j3jsenttal CreeD 

sacraments; and on the condition of the hu- 
man soul after death." 

Now, compare these concerns of the creeds of 
men with the concerns of Christ's creed. On 
all these questions which have constituted the 
body of the Christian dogma of churches Jesus 
was notably silent. Not one of them was an 
actuating principle in his life. 
An examination of that most popular and 
most simple of the creeds used in public wor- 
ship, the so-called Apostles' Creed, reveals 
the astounding fact that this creed contains 
for the most part only those beliefs which 
Christ's creed omitted, and that it omits al- 
most all that Christ's creed contained. The 
Apostles' Creed omits all reference to Christ's 
life, passing from his miraculous birth immedi- 
ately to his physical sufferings. The creed of 
Jesus was concerned almost wholly with his 
life. If he believed in his miraculous birth, he 
never said anything about it, much less did 
he make such a belief a cause for his life of 
service. If he knew the exact relation which 
he in his personality bore to the personality 
[39] 



W^^at i0 emtntial 



of God, he spoke of that relationship only 
incidentally, claiming for himself only that he 
did the Father's work. Even what he believed 
about his death had apparently no reference 
to sacrificial atonement, but rather to the 
inevitable method of service. He believed 
that he must serve God and save men, there- 
fore he believed that in a world of sin he must 
suffer. 

Startlingly significant is the conclusion of these 
considerations. Practically all that the his- 
toric faith of the church has demanded as a 
basis of church membership and of Christian 
fellowship is absent from the actuating con- 
victions of Christ himself. In other words, 
that which has been demanded of the followers 
of Christ as the basis of their Christlike living 
was not at all the basis of Christ's life. 

Sec. 5. The Essential Creed of the Christian 

From the necessary negations of the previous 
section we turn with relief to the more positive 
consideration. When he who would be a 
follower of Christ asks to-day, "What must I 
[40] 



I^l^at (0 ti^e (Bmntial Creed 

believe to be a Christian?" the answer is two- 
fold: "If you would follow Christ you must 
accept the beliefs of Christ which made him 
what he was," and, "If you would really be 
Christlike, you must accept these beliefs as he 
accepted them." 

In view of what has already been said in the 
last two sections, the first answer needs no 
illustration and but little comment. The be- 
liefs of Jesus which formed his character and 
influenced his ministry were the three beliefs in 
the Fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of 
man, and love's compulsion to sacrificing serv- 
ice. Since these were the formative influences 
in his life, one cannot reasonably hope to follow 
that life without their acceptance . Besides these 
truths, the Christian may believe anything that 
seems to him reasonable. He may accept im- 
plicitly the longest creed in Christendom, but 
that will help him only theologically. Accept- 
ing such a creed, he may be called by his fellows 
soundly orthodox, but to be truly Christian, he 
need accept only those beliefs which were fun- 
damental to Christ himself. 
[41] 



3^]^at (js dBjSjsential 



The second answer perhaps needs more expla- 
nation. The Christian must accept the actuat- 
ing faith of Christ as Christ accepted it. A 
moment's reflection will convince anyone that 
Christ's creed was not accepted merely in 
an intellectual sense, but in an ethical sense. 
There was a personal significance to each of 
the three articles of his belief. There was an 
irresistible compulsion about them all. 
He did not believe merely in a "Father Al- 
mighty, Maker of heaven and earth." He 
believed that God was his Father, and that be- 
lief carried with it a compulsion to filial obedi- 
ence and service. 

He did not believe in the brotherhood of man 
in vague, universal terms, simply because the 
logic of his thinking compelled him to see that 
this belief was the inevitable consequence of 
the Fatherhood of God. He believed that 
men were his brethren, and again the belief 
carried with it a compulsion, the compulsion 
to fraternal helpfulness. His brother he must 
save. 

Nor did Jesus believe in the necessity of suffer- 
[42] 



WW (0 tl^e €?i0ent(al CreeD 

ing and sacrifice, simply as a philosophical 
formula, a mere matter of deduction from the 
fundamental nature of the expression of love, 
much less as a necessary theory concerning 
any form of atonement. He believed that he 
must suffer. He believed that the love of the 
Father v^hom he would joyfully serve must be 
expressed to the brother whom he would gladly 
save by his sacrifice. 

To be like Christ the Christian must believe 
as Christ believed. Merely to believe in the 
Father of love with his intellect will not help 
him to be Christlike. God must be his Father, 
and this filial relationship he must gladly ac- 
cept. He, too, must believe that he must work 
the works of Him that sent him. 

The Christian cannot believe in the univer- 
sal brotherhood of man as a mere matter of 
theory. He must believe that the man in need 
who happens to be nearest him is his brother, 
and this fraternal relationship he must joyfully 
acknowledge. He must believe that he, too, 
must save his brother. 

Nor can he be a true Christian by believing 
[43] 



W^^at ijs (B^^mtial 



only in the necessity of someone else's sacrifice. 
It will not vitally help him to be a Christian 
to believe that Christ sacrificed for him. He 
must believe that he must sacrifice for others. 
He, too, must be fully convinced that his filial 
duty to God and his fraternal relations with 
men demand that he ''must suffer many 
things," and it must be his ideal to be so filled 
with the Christlike love that he can accept the 
suffering with joy unspeakable. 
The essential creed of the Christian is brief 
and simple, but it is personal and compelling. 
Let us think of it soberly. Let us not only 
believe it with our minds; let us accept it with 
our wills. Here it is. 

THE ESSENTIAL CREED OF THE CHRISTIAN 

Article 1. I believe that God is my Father 

whom I must serve. 

Article 2. I believe that man is my brother 

whom I must save. 

Article 3. I believe that I must serve my 

Father and save my brother by the sacrifice 

of love. 

[44] 



All of which the Christian may express in 
terms of his relationship to Christ, remember- 
ing that in himself as in Jesus, the compulsions 
of his belief are the sweet, joyful compulsions 
of filial, fraternal, unselfish love: 
I believe that the truths which were actuating 
convictions in Christ must move me to follow 
his example. 



[45] 



11 



'41 



4i 



CHAPTER THIRD 



c^jcpertence? 




Sec. 1. The Need of Personal Experience 

HE modem demand for a prac- 
tical Christianity has popu- 
larly been supposed to have 
deprecatory reference not only 
to the creeds of churches, but 
to the personal religious expe- 
riences of Christians. Such terms as repent- 
ance, conversion, consecration, and communion 
have of late been treated lightly as the relics 
of a Christianity long since outgrown; and 
such terms as benevolence, charity, and social 
service have been supposed to supplant them. 
We remarked in our last chapter that a prev- 
alent impatience with meaningless and unes- 
sential theological formulas was a sure sign of 
the beginning of a new era of Christian ac- 
tivity. Now we must observe that an era of 
[47] 



wm i^ (tmtntm 



Christian philanthropy must inevitably be 
marked by a depreciation of personal experi- 
ences. Philanthropy is a word whose signifi- 
cance is wholly social. Repentance and con- 
version are words whose significance is wholly 
personal. We may go still farther. Essential 
Christianity as we have tried to define it is 
simply Christlikeness, and Christlikeness in its 
essential method of expression is simply and 
solely the ministrv^ of unselfishness. But un- 
selfishness, too, is a word which has no mean- 
ing apart from its social application, while re- 
pentance and conversion are words which have 
no meaning apart from their personal applica- 
tion. 

These observations lead us logically to the 
following conclusion. Personal religious ex- 
perience cannot be considered as the end of 
the Christian life. The end of the Christian 
life is social service. 

But this conclusion by no means denies the 
necessity of the personal experience. The 
social service of the Christian is indeed some- 
thing that must be intensely unselfish in its 
[48] 



motive and social in its operation. Christian 
philanthropy must always have more refer- 
ence to other men than it has to self. Yet 
though service has a social object, to be really 
Christian it must have a personal subject. 
We give to others. We give of ourselves. 
If Christian charity were only the cold-blooded 
bestowal of the coin upon the beggar, the 
personal experience of the benefactor would be 
immaterial. The coin will purchase as much 
of the needed food and clothing, whether it 
be bestowed by a character the most sainted 
or the most sordid. Indeed the purchasing 
power of the coin would be the same even 
though it should be turned out into the hand 
of the beggar by the operation of an insensate 
machine. Much of our charity may perhaps 
be characterized as machine-like. But such 
charity is not of the essence of Christianity. 
In essential Christianity one cannot separate 
the gift from the giver. To be truly Christ- 
like is to give one's self. True Christian 
charity, then, has its personal as well as its 
social significance. Hence the personal char- 
[49] 



a^i^at tjs e^^mtial 



acter of the Christian is of utmost importance, 
even though the object of his Christianity be 
social and not personal at all. Because his 
personal character is of importance, the per- 
sonal experiences which have helped to form the 
character become of fundamental interest. 
We must here be careful to give a compre- 
hensive significance to the term experience. 
Personal experience is simply personal history. 
All the hopes and aspirations, the achieve- 
ments and the disappointments v^hich have 
made the man what he is, constitute his experi- 
ence. All the hopes and aspirations, all the 
struggles and the failures which have made 
him religiously what he is, constitute his reli- 
gious experience. 

It has too often been customary to limit reli- 
gious experiences to certain crises in personal 
history. Such limitation we must carefully 
avoid. Certain crises may mark certain stages 
of development, but the development may be 
a reality even though the crises be not apparent. 
The history of the development of personal 
Christian character should be marked off into 
[50] 



epochs only for the sake of convenience. Names 
should be given to the description of those 
epochs only with the utmost caution, and with 
the frankest confession of their inadequacy. 
Since no two persons were ever exactly alike, 
it is safe to say that no two ever had precisely 
the same personal experiences. In religion 
as well as in all other phases of human living, 
we shall always have variety of experience. 
But the variety will be in details rather than in 
fundamentals. The differences will be in the 
degree in which men become conscious of the 
experiences, rather than in a real difference 
in the experiences themselves. Certain in- 
evitable characteristics will always mark the 
personal development of him who becomes 
really Christlike, for certain fundamental char- 
acteristics are observable in the personal de- 
velopment of the Christ, whom the Christian 
must follow. 

Sec. 2. A Prevalent Misapprehension 

Before we turn to a consideration of Christ's 

personal experiences and their relation to the 

[51] 



I^i^at ijs d^jsjsential 



necessary experiences of the Christian, we 
must pause for a moment to clear from our 
proposed pathway the rubbish of a grave mis- 
apprehension. 

It has been too much the habit of certain 
Christian teachers and preachers to relate the 
personal experiences of Christians to their hope 
of personal salvation into heaven. The plea 
for personal salvation has been based upon the 
threatened eternal punishment of continued sin. 
The acceptance of Christ's sacrifice has been 
urged as the means of deliverance. The sum- 
mum bonum of Christian desire has been pre- 
sented as the assurance of the possession of 
a "mansion in the sky." With this personal 
salvation into heaven as the one desired end 
of the Christian profession, the corresponding 
experiences of the Christian, commonly ac- 
cepted as such, have been these: — (l) A griev- 
ous consciousness of the guilt of sin; (2) an 
exultant consciousness of the removal of the 
guilt by the " blood of Jesus"; and, (3) a peace- 
ful, not to say prideful, consciousness of the 
assurance of eternal bliss. 
[52] 



W}^at i0 tl^e €^^mtial tvvtvitntt 

All these experiences are based upon the most 
childish and most selfish conception of the 
Christian religion. When such experiences 
as these are demanded of the Christian, and 
only such, the implication is that the religion 
of Jesus has no significance except as it relates 
to one's own individual and selfish welfare. 
Inasmuch as the Christian religion is more 
than a manner of the deliverance of the in- 
dividual soul from eternal punishment, in so 
much more must the experiences of the Chris- 
tian have other than this ultra-selfish applica- 
tion. 

Not all people are alike introspective. It may 
be that there are some people too busy trying 
to help their unfortunate neighbors to give 
much thought to their own unfortunate selves. 
It may be that there are those who are more 
burdened for the sins of others than for their 
own sins. It is possible that there are some 
who are more anxious to secure for others 
decent dwelling places upon the earth than to 
secure for themselves the mansions of heaven. 
Now, these people who are apparently more 
[53] 



W^at t0 €00enttal 



interested in the welfare of others than in their 
own v/elfare are no less Christian people than 
their more introspective neighbors. Indeed, 
if Christianity be the philanthropic service of 
others, they may truly be called Christians of 
the more mature type; and the fact that so 
many men are to-day more interested in the 
present salvation of society than in the fu- 
ture salvation of themselves may be taken as 
a direct proof of development towards the 
religious ideal of Jesus. For the one object 
of the ministry of Jesus was the salvation of 
others. And Jesus taught the truth that the 
Christian world has not yet entirely learned— 
that no man should think first of saving his 
own life, but that his own salvation would 
result from his service of others. 
We must frankly admit, then, that those reli- 
gious experiences which arise from the intro- 
spective habit of mind are not the essential 
Christian experiences. They may be real ex- 
periences to some; they cannot be demanded 
of all. But when we make this admission we 
do not at all do away with the necessity of the 
[54] 



W^at ijs tl^e (Bmntial txptvimct 

personal religious experience. We must still 
remember that the social object of Christian 
living always demands a personal subject. 
Social helpfulness is the result of personal 
experience just as truly as is personal piety. 
To do good is as much a personal acquirement 
as to be good. The mode of the personal 
Christian experience will change as the object 
of the Christian life develops from the crude, 
seliBsh conception of individual salvation into 
the more mature and unselfish conception of 
social service. The mode of the experience will 
change, but the intensive personality of the ex- 
perience will remain the same. 
In this more mature conception there may be 
little of the consciousness of personal guilt 
for one's own sins, but there must be much 
of the consciousness of personal responsibility 
for the sins of others. There may be no exult- 
ant consciousness of the salvation of one's 
self by the sacrifice of Christ, but there should 
be an equally exultant consciousness of the 
joy of serving someone else by one's own sac- 
rifice. There may, indeed, be no evidence at 
[55] 



wm is; t^^mtial 



all of the peaceful assurance of the future 
heavenly mansion furnished by God for one's 
self, but we should expect the trustful, helpful 
assurance of clean, pure, wholesome earthly 
habitations furnished by those who are trying 
to work together with God for the promotion 
of his Kingdom here and now. 
The man who has experienced within himself 
a feeling of personal responsibility for others, 
a personal satisfaction in helping some other 
ever so little, and an abiding hope of the even- 
tual establishment of the divine Kingdom upon 
the earth, — that man must be considered ac- 
cording to Christ's standard as really a Chris- 
tian as he who experiences the corresponding 
emotions with reference to his own eternal wel- 
fare. If the latter man experiences only those 
emotions which have their intensely selfish 
causation, the former must be considered the 
more mature and, therefore, the more Christ- 
like Christian. 

We must free our minds, then, from the mis- 
apprehension that the essential personal ex- 
periences of the Christian must arise either 
[56] 



5^]^at fjS ti^e (Bmntial tvpttimct 

from any conception of one's own personal 
lost condition apart from Christ or from any 
desire for one's own personal salvation through 
Christ. True Christian experiences of a lower 
order may in some instances arise from these 
lower conceptions and desires; but the vital 
Christian experience arises from the concep- 
tion of the lost condition of other men and 
from the desire to render to these a Christlike 
service. 

Sec. 3. The Religious Experience of Jesus 

We are ready now to try to understand the re- 
ligious experiences of Jesus, our Master, and 
our one Example. Unfortunately very Httle 
attention has ever been given to the study of 
the religious experience of Christ in its relation 
to the essential religious experience of Chris- 
tians. The Church has always insisted upon 
the necessity of the religious experience of the 
professed follower of Christ, but it has never 
based that necessity upon the recorded experi- 
ence of Christ himself. Indeed, the Church has 
in general considered Christ's personality so 
[57] 



W^^at i^ Cjsjsenttal 



unique as to separate him from all possible 
experiences of anyone else. Preachers have 
bidden their congregations with one breath to 
follow Jesus, and with the next breath they 
have declared that by his miraculous birth he 
was lifted above humanity to a position hu- 
manly unattainable. Evangelists have ex- 
horted their hearers to grow like Christ, at 
the same time that they have asserted that 
Christ's unique relation with God has made 
his character unapproachable. In short, the 
Christlikeness of the demanded Christian ex- 
perience has been made impossible by the very 
teachings that have required it. 
To make good this assertion, let us consider 
a few specifications. The Church has de- 
manded of Christians the experience of repent- 
ance. Jesus did not repent. The Church has 
considel'ed it essential that Christians must be 
converted. There is no record that Christ 
was converted. Some Christian teachers have 
taught the necessity of a revolutionary crisis 
after conversion, called the conscious experience 
of sanctification or the Baptism of the Holy 
[58] 



I^i^at tjs ti^t CjSjSenttal (Bxvnimct 

Ghost. The Hfe of Jesus witnesses no such 
revolutionary crisis. The Church has preached 
John the Baptist's message of repentance; it 
has upheld the Saul of Tarsus type of conver- 
sion; it has magnified the Pentecostal experi- 
ence of the disciples. The Christian teachers 
of the centuries past have asserted that the 
essential characteristic of the Christian's ex- 
perience shall be revolutionary, while the expe- 
rience of Jesus was evolutionary. Jesus, as the 
narrative distinctly states, "grew in favor with 
God." (Luke 2 : 52.) But since Paul's time we 
have been told that the follower of Jesus can 
be saved only "by the grace of God." (Vide 
Eph. 2:5.) 

It is this phrase "grew in favor," or, as the 
Greek words may be more correctly translated, 
"grew in grace," which furnishes us with the 
key to the religious experience of Jesus. 
The phrase in the first place necessitates our 
belief in the initial immaturity of the character 
of Jesus, for were his character perfect from 
his birth there could have been no growth. 
However we may interpret Christ theologically, 
[59] 



WW tjs e^^mtial 



the historic person of Jesus began his life in 
spiritual immaturity, just as he began his life 
in physical immaturity. We can no more 
think of his soul as fully equipped at birth for 
the complete expression of God's love than 
we can think of the infant body in the Bethle- 
hem manger as fully equipped to bear the 
suflFering of Calvary. Jesus began with im- 
maturity. 

But this immaturity of soul must be distin- 
guished from spiritual blemish. We are no 
more compelled to believe that spiritual incom- 
pleteness is sinfulness than we are to believe 
that physical incompleteness is synonymous 
with some malformation of the body. Imma- 
turity is an incompleteness which needs only 
development. It is something which can be 
overcome by growth. 

The process of the development of the soul of 
Jesus was a process which can be conveniently 
divided into epochs, though no notably ap- 
parent crises mark the limits of those epochs. 
1. The first epoch of Christ's personal reli- 
gious history seems to run quite parallel with 
[60] 



Wl^at tjs tl^e tmntial (Bvvttimtt 

that period of physical development which 
ends at adolescence. We cannot be sure that 
Jesus at the beginning of adolescence became 
conscious of any clearly defined religious 
emotion. Our record of this time of his life 
is lamentably meager. Only one glimpse do 
we get of him at this stage of his development, 
and that is contained in a portion of the Gospel 
of Luke, whose authenticity has been called in 
question. Jesus, according to this narrative, 
went with his parents to the temple at Jerusa- 
lem. He was then twelve years of age. When 
his parents started to return from their act of 
customary Jewish worship, Jesus lingered 
behind. After some search they found him 
discussing religious matters with the religious 
leaders of his day, and he silenced his parents' 
natural complaint at his conduct by asking if 
they did not know that "he must be about 
his Father's business." 

These words, reported to have been spoken by 
the boy Jesus, offer no conclusive proof of the 
personal experience through which he was pass- 
ing, but the suggestion of the words is illumina- 
[61] 



WW tjs emmtial 



ting. Indeed, if Jesus never said these exact 
words at all, we know from the expressed con- 
viction of his later Hfe (Vide John 9:4) that 
he must previously have passed through a re- 
ligious experience which these words quite ac- 
curately describe. At what may have been an 
epochal stage in his physical development he 
entered upon a new epoch in his religious his- 
tory. It was the epoch of the consciousness of 
God the Father. It was the glad welcoming 
into his life of the compulsion of his obligation 
to the Father. 

2. Our narratives give us no further glimpse 
of Christ's growth in grace until we come to 
the baptism in the Jordan, which marked the 
beginning of his public ministry. We cannot, 
therefore, trace the process by which the early 
acceptance of his duty to his Father evolved 
the consciousness of the necessity of his own 
personal ministry. But we can witness the 
act which expressed his acceptance of the 
ministry. The baptism was his act of conse- 
cration to the service of others. Earlier in life 
he had accepted his filial obligation to God. 
[62] 



a^i^at i^ ti)t tmntial txvtvimcz 

Now in the Jordan he avows his acceptance 
of the consequent obHgation to his fellow men. 
The epoch in his religious history whose out- 
ward sign was expressed by his baptism was 
the epoch of the consciousness of the needs of 
men. It was the acceptance into his life of the 
compulsion of service. 

3. The record of the ministry of Jesus begins 
with the account of the temptation in the 
wilderness and ends with the institution of 
the Lord's Supper in the upper room at Jeru- 
salem. In other words, it begins with the 
allurements of a costless ministry and ends 
with the sublime symbolism of the true minis- 
try's cost in sacrifice. From the temptations, 
though they are allegorically reported, we are 
to learn not only that he was ''in all points 
tempted like as we are," but also that he was 
tempted exactly as we are, to choose the less 
costly method of service. From the institution 
of the Lord's Supper we are to learn not only 
that Jesus would have his disciples remem- 
ber the sufferings of his service, but also that 
he would have them learn what he himself 
[63] 



W}^at ijs cBjcUSential 



had learned — that all service must cost suffer- 
ing. 

Along all the hard road which led from the 
real temptation of Jesus to his real acceptance 
of the way of sacrifice, we cannot follow. We 
know not just when he became conscious in 
himself of complete victory over the tempta- 
tion. We cannot tell just when he accepted 
in his consciousness the truth which he tried 
to impart to his disciples when he began to 
teach them ''that he must suffer many things." 
But we need not know the precise moment when 
there came to him this new self-consciousness. 
All we need to understand is that the conscious- 
ness did come to him. Some time after the 
recorded temptation to evade suffering, and 
some time before the institution of the sacred 
symbol of suffering, Jesus entered into another 
epoch of personal history. This last epoch 
was the consciousness of the need of sacrifice. 
It was the acceptance into his life of the way 
by which he must serve his Father and save 
his brethren. 

The Savior's "growth in grace," then, we 
[64] 



may with reasonable accuracy mark off into 
three stages of development. They were, the 
consciousness of the acceptance of his filial 
relation to God, the consciousness of his 
acceptance of his fraternal obligations to men, 
and the consciousness of his acceptance of the 
way of sacrifice. 

These three discernible stages in what we may 
call Christ's religious experience follow closely, 
as inevitably they must, the three fundamental 
convictions which we called his creed. The 
convictions would not have been vital unless 
they had culminated in experiences. The 
experiences would not have been real had 
they not developed from convictions. 
Let us summarize. Jesus "grew in grace" 
through the consciousness of the Fatherhood 
of God, the consciousness of the brotherhood 
of man, and the consciousness of the necessity 
of sacrifice. His character was developed 
through the joyful acceptance into his life of 
the obligations of these three conscious experi- 
ences which were in turn the result of his 
inner convictions. Because of these experi- 
[65] 



wm tjs e^^mmi 



ences he became the one whom we must fol- 
low, if we would be really Christlike. 

Sec. 4. The Interference of Sin 

In our consideration of the religious experi- 
ences of Jesus, we must always stand amazed 
at his utter unconsciousness of the experience 
of sin. Here, indeed, have we discovered his 
real uniqueness. No other person has ever 
dared to challenge his fellows with such fear- 
less words as these: "Which of you convicteth 
me of sin ? ' ' Not one besides him has ever suc- 
cessfully claimed entire freedom from guilt. 
Yet Jesus was almost constantly performing 
acts which were justly censured by his contem- 
poraries. When he ate with publicans and sin- 
ners, he was guilty of a breach of ceremonial- 
ism, considered most vital to the religion of his 
people; and one can find no fault with the 
scribes and Pharisees for their condemnation of 
his conduct. When he healed the sick on the 
Sabbath, he was, according to rabbinical inter- 
pretation, breaking a command of Jehovah; and 
the severe criticism of the rabbis was inevitable. 
[66] 



^]^at (^ ti^t CjS^enttal €vptximtt 

When he justified his disciples for a like in- 
fringement of the Sabbath law, in their case 
with no excuse of benevolent intention, but 
only to satisfy their own hunger, he mani- 
fested a disregard for sacred tradition which 
was apparently without excuse; and the 
consequent hatred of the upholders of those 
traditions he must have expected. 
Whenever Jesus did anything which his 
contemporaries were wont to characterize as 
sin, he always explained away the supposed 
sinfulness of the act by an appeal to a higher 
tribunal. The law of ceremonial cleanliness 
must give place to the law of the service of the 
lost. The infringement of the literal interpreta- 
tion of specific commands did not matter, pro- 
vided the motive of the infringement was that 
of unselfish benevolence. Men were not made 
for laws ; laws were made for men. " Therefore 
the Son of man is Lord also of the Sabbath." 
It is very significant that Jesus used the term 
"Son of man" when he thus announced his 
superiority to the traditions of the elders. 
From the context, this use of the phrase cannot 
[67] 



Wi^Bt ijs emmtial 



logically be taken to refer to any claim of 
divineness which Jesus made for himself 
alone, but solely to a claim of ideal humanness 
which he made for all mankind. It was as 
though he were exemplifying in himself the 
truth that all men are ideally greater than the 
laws which have been enacted for their gov- 
ernment, and that therefore no man should 
be judged by his infringement of this or that 
commandment. Only should he be judged by 
the selfishness or the unselfishness of the mo- 
tive which actuated him. 

Such reflections as these lead inevitably to 
the following conclusion: 

Though Jesus was the only person who ever 
fully demonstrated his independence of man- 
made laws by the constant manifestation of 
sinless motives, ideally all persons ought, like 
him, to be above human law. And again, 
like him, they ought to be emancipated from 
law by participation in love. They ought to be 
superior to all laws of human government, be- 
cause they ought always to be actuated by the 
unselfish motives of their divine inheritance. 
[68] 



When we give to sinlessness the spiritual sig- 
nificance illustrated by Jesus, that of perfect 
inward obedience to the motive of love, rather 
than that of perfect outward obedience to 
the laws of men, we can claim for ideal hu- 
manity, created in God's image, nothing less 
than Jesiis claimed for himself as the Son of 
man. When we observe that no one but Jesus 
has attained this ideal, we must not therefore 
conclude that the ideal itself has become im- 
paired. We must assume only that individual 
attempts to attain the ideal have failed. 
Sin, theologically considered, has too often 
been supposed to lower the human ideal. It 
has been assumed that since one man once 
failed to be what he ought, all other men can- 
not expect to be what they ought. Because 
of the sin of Adam, theology has been prone 
to consign all men to a state of original sin- 
fulness. But over against thip theological 
conception of the necessary universality of 
sin we must put the one example of the sin- 
lessness of Jesus. Instead of saying that be- 
cause one man sinned all others must sin, we 
[69] 



^]^at t!S C^jsentfsl 



should say that because one man was sinless 
all others ought to be sinless. Instead of 
assuming that sin is a necessary experience of 
humanity because of Adam, we who are Chris- 
tians should deny its necessity because of 
Christ. 

But when we are bold enough to make this 
denial of necessary sin, we must be careful to 
understand just what we mean by sin. Im- 
maturity is not sin. Jesus was born immature. 
An inherited tendency to wrongdoing is not 
sin. Jesus, whether he was born of one human 
parent or of two, must have shared somewhat 
in the common inheritance of humanity. The 
selfish desire which makes temptation real is not 
sin. Since Jesus was tempted he must have 
felt a desire for the selfish end, else had there 
been no reality to the temptation. Sin is the 
conscious y willful choice of the selfish. To sin is 
to yield to the selfish desire. To sin is voli- 
tionally to follow the inherited tendency to evil. 
Mistakes and failures must ever be the product 
of immaturity, but sin is an act only of the con- 
scious volition of the mature. The necessity for 
[70] 



^]^at i^ ti^t tmntial txpnimct 

the experience of such sin we who believe that 
Christ was our example must stoutly deny, even 
while we sorrowfully admit that the fact of such 
sin is present with us all. 

We must go farther than this. We must deny 
not only the necessity of the experience of 
sin, but also the consequent necessity of those 
religious experiences which assume necessary 
sin as their condition. 

Obviously, if we deny that sin is necessary we 
must also deny the necessity of repentance. 
No man needs to repent of sin for which he 
has not been personally responsible. Descent 
from Adam does not call for repentance, but 
only actual participation in conscious wrong- 
doing. 

Again, if we deny the necessary participation 
in sin of all humanity, we must deny that the 
experience of conversion is necessary to all 
men. No man needs to turn from sin unless 
he himself has by an act of free will consciously 
pursued sin. 

We must hold up as the ideal of Christian 

attainment, then, not these revolutionary ex- 

[71] 



a^l^at (js €^^mtial 



periences which presuppose the soul's mal- 
formation, but only and always those evolu- 
tionary experiences of Jesus himself, which 
presuppose only immaturity. 
Repentance and conversion will be necessary 
Christian experiences to that man to whom 
sin is a conscious human experience. Repent- 
ance is sorrow for the sin, and conversion is turn- 
ing away from its pursuit. But these experiences 
are necessary only because of the accident of 
sin. They are not necessary because of any 
fundamental characteristic of humanity. 
We must be careful, indeed, that we do not 
teach men that they need to sin in order that 
they may be "saved by grace." Jesus has 
taught men that God will be graciously for- 
giving, when they have sinned. But though 
the prodigal son was saved by grace, the 
elder brother had the preferable commenda- 
tion, "Son, thou art always with me." The 
commended faithfulness of the elder brother 
and not the forgiven profligacy of the younger 
is the type of the more desirable relationship 
of men with God. We must teach men that 
[72] 



I^i^at (0 ti^e t^^mtial experience 

they need not go away from their Father's 
home. We must teach them so to live that 
they will need only to "grow in grace." The 
natural way for the soul to come into the experi- 
ence of Christianity is the way of develop- 
ment. Christian nurture is nearer Christ's 
way than Christian revivals. Evolution is 
more natural than revolution. Sin is an 
interference with the natural order of the 
soul's growth, and not a necessary experience 
in that growth. 

Sec. 5. The Essential Experiences of the 
Christian 
Let us now go back to the experiences of Jesus 
which we saw could be appropriately designated 
as the inevitable consequences of the three ac- 
tuating convictions of his life, the experiences 
of filial relationship with God, of fraternal re- 
lationship to men, and of love's compulsion to 
sacrifice. We have now to inquire in just what 
sense these experiences are essential to the 
Christian of to-day. Must we expect the Chris- 
tian's experiences to be literally identical with 
[73] 



Wi^at i0 €0jsent(al 



Christ's? Shall we insist that the Christian 
must become conscious of all these experiences 
each in its turn? And are we to believe that 
these experiences are wholly unrelated to any 
of the experiences of Christians commonly ac- 
cepted throughout all the ages of historic Chris- 
tianity ? 

The answer to the last question is a decided 
negative. Far from being unrelated to the 
common experiences of professed Christians, 
the experiences of Christ are in their funda- 
mental characteristics identical with those ex- 
periences which organized Christianity has 
uniformly demanded of its adherents. The 
answers to the previous questions will be made 
apparent if we trace this identity somewhat in 
detail. 

1. The New Birth is the name which organized 
Christianity has generally used to designate the 
beginning of Christian experience. Some por- 
tions of the Christian Church insist that the new 
birth shall be accompanied by evidences of re- 
pentance, and that in its essence it is a conver- 
sion from a state of sinfulness. Other parts of 
[74] 



II 



the Church Universal see in the new birth only 
an evidence of the initial stage of spiritual de- 
velopment, which needs but confirmation. But 
all the Church is practically united in its in- 
sistence upon a necessary beginning of the spir- 
itual life. 

That is all that is essential in the fundamental 
idea of the new birth. The new birth is a be- 
ginning. Just as physical birth is the begin- 
ning of physical life, so the "New Birth" is the 
beginning of spiritual life. 
The first consciousness of the new life is in both 
instances the consciousness of filial dependence. 
In both instances, too, the fact of the birth 
may normally antedate the consciousness of the 
birth. All that is necessary to the Christian's 
consciousness is that at some time he shall feel 
within himself the impulses of a divine concep- 
tion. As Jesus expressed it, he must feel the 
compulsion to work the works of God. 
As to how this new feeling may have originated 
he need not question. The fact of the new birth 
is to be inferred from its observed results, not 
from an understanding of the nature of its in- 
[75] 



WW ijs CjSjsential 



ception. Just as we know a child has been born 
of human parents when we witness its Hfe, so 
we know a soul has been born of God when we 
witness its love. Like Nicodemus, the Christian 
Church has sometimes asked how these things 
could be. But it is absolutely impertinent to 
meet the manifestations of life itself with a spec- 
ulative inquiry concerning the origin of life. 
The essential characteristic of the new birth is 
not conditioned by the experience of sin. It is 
just the beginning of a new and natural phase 
of human development. We can properly say 
that a child has been born intellectually when 
first he becomes conscious of a thirst for knowl- 
edge, or we can say that a man has been born 
morally when he first feels within himself the 
compulsion of conscience. Some of these new 
births may be accompanied by observable signs. 
Some men may be able to say, " On such and 
such a day I was born intellectually, or morally, 
or religiously." But the knowledge of the exact 
beginning is by no means necessary. 
When a human soul becomes conscious of its 
obligation to a divine Father, that soul has been 
[76] 



^]^at (^ ti^e C^jsenttal tvvttimtt 

bom. The time and the place and the circum- 
stances of his birth are immaterial. He is a 
child of God. 

2. Baptism is the universally accepted method 
by which professed Christians for nearly twenty 
centuries have expressed their consecration to 
the service of mankind. It is unfortunate that 
this method of consecration should have come 
to be considered only as a sacrament of the 
Church. It cannot properly be considered as 
such, for baptism antedates by many years the 
organization of the Church. Moreover, bap- 
tism as embraced by Jesus himself was not ex- 
pressive of his admission to any formally or- 
ganized body of believers ; it was expressive only 
of his purpose to serve men. Baptism, then, if 
it really means anything to the Christian, means 
the expression of his experience of consecra- 
tion. 

The form of the expression does not matter. 
Jesus was probably immersed. But when any 
body of Christians have substituted sprinkling 
for immersion, they have thereby practically 
denied the necessity for the preservation of the 
[77] 



a^i^at tis cBjsjsential 



particular form used by Jesus himself. And 
when we once admit that the particular form 
of the consecration of Jesus in any of its details 
does not bind his followers, we have virtually 
admitted the immateriality of any form of ex- 
pression. In this matter as in all others, the 
Christian is not called upon to do precisely the 
thing which Jesus did in precisely the same way. 
He is to be actuated by the spirit of Jesus. 
The Christian, then, may express his acknowl- 
edgment of the purpose to serve others in any 
form of consecration that may seem to him best 
adapted to his needs. He may be immersed. 
He may be sprinkled. He may find none of the 
accepted forms of baptism suitable either to his 
needs or to his conditions. But in some way he, 
to be like Christ, must accept and publicly ex- 
press the obligation of his fraternal service. 
Whether he submit to any church ordinance of 
baptism is immaterial, but really to be Christ- 
like he must become openly consecrated to 
Christlike endeavor. 

3. By the Communion of the Lord's Supper 

Christians throughout all the ages of Christian 

[78] 



I 



I^l^at t0 tj^e Cjsjsentfal cBjcpertence 

history have been accustomed to express their 
relation to sacrifice, though they have some- 
times understood it to signify their acceptance 
of Christ's sacrifice instead of their obligation 
to sacrifice for others. Unfortunately, the 
Communion of the Lord's Supper, like the 
ordinance of baptism, has been appropriated 
by the Church as a sacrament. More unfor- 
tunate still, most branches of the Christian 
Church have insisted that only those can prop- 
erly commune who have been conventionally 
inducted into church membership. There was 
no organized church, however, when Jesus in- 
stituted the Lord's Supper. Those who com- 
muned with him at the first table of our Lord 
had confessed no definite creed nor observed 
any fixed ecclesiastical ceremony. 
Another unfortunate circumstance is that the 
Church Universal is not agreed as to the exact 
significance of that institution which they have 
called a sacrament. A part of the Church has 
made the Lord's Supper to mean only an act in 
memory of the sacrifice of Christ. Another por- 
tion of the Church has considered it to embody 
[79] 



W\^at i^ t^^mtial 



the actual presence of the body and blood of 
him who died that men might live. Sadly has 
the entire Church been prone to miss the full 
significance of the institution, as the expression 
of the communicant's willingness to sacrifice in 
Christ's spirit. But only as such does the com- 
munion of the Lord's Supper have vital signifi- 
cance to the true Christian. He may by the 
communion reverently and adorably remember 
the sacrifice of Christ, but unless he also ex- 
presses in the communion his own acceptance of 
Christ's method of service, the communion in 
itself will have no practical effect upon his 
Christian living. If the communion is to mean 
anything vital to the Christian, it must mean 
the expression of the truth that like Jesus, he 
has experienced the obligation upon him of 
love's one way of service. 
Let the Christian become conscious within him- 
self of his acceptance of the way of sacrifice, 
and he may express this inner experience in any 
outward observance that may seem to him to be 
adequate. He may express it in the worship of 
the Mass. He may express it by receiving the 
[80] 



WW i^ t^t tmntial Cjcpet:tence 

emblems of sacrifice from the hands of the 
serving deacons or rectors. He may express it 
in the moment of silent communion without 
visible emblems. Or he may express it in no 
church ordinance at all, but only in the secrecy 
of his own heart. But however he may choose 
to express his community with the sacrifice of 
Christ, let him be sure that he feels it. For he 
cannot truly be a Christian unless with Christ 
he has consciously accepted the obligation and 
the privilege of sacrificing service. 
Let us briefly summarize the results of our in- 
quiry concerning the Christian's essential ex- 
periences. They must be in spirit like the ex- 
periences of Jesus himself. Like Christ, the 
Christian must become joyfully conscious of the 
compulsion of his filial relationship with God. 
Like him, he must consciously and voluntarily 
consecrate himself to the service of men. Like 
him, he must definitely accept as the principle of 
his life love's method of sacrifice. If to these 
three essential experiences he must add the ex- 
periences of repentance and of conversion, it is 
not because of anything that is fundamental 
[81] 



I^i^at ti8 cEjSisential 



to his human nature; it is because he has chosen 
to go contrary to his God-created nature into 
ways of selfishness and of sin. Though we 
must admit that it will be some time before the 
ideal evolutionary experiences of Jesus him- 
self will be all that the Christian needs, we must 
be careful to remember that the revolutionary 
experiences are necessary only because of the 
interference of sin, and not because they are in 
any ways involved in the nature of the religion 
of Jesus. Men may need to be "saved by 
grace." They ought to need only to "grow in 
grace." 

The essential Christian experiences are the ex- 
periences of Jesus. 



[82] 



CHAPTER FOURTH 




Sec. 1. The Bible; Its Accepted Preeminence 

F an intelligent inhabitant of 
Mars who had never heard of 
Jesus of Nazareth should 
visit the earth, and should be- 
gin a careful study of the re- 
ligion called Christian, he 
would naturally conclude that the religion was 
founded upon a Book instead of upon a Life. 
To this erroneous conclusion he would be led 
by the observation of many things. 
In the first place he would observe that the 
preachers of the Christian religion arc accus- 
tomed to base their homilies and exhortations 
upon passages taken from only one Book. He 
would observe that as a rule these preachers 
make no careful distinctions between the parts 
of the Book, that they reinforce their state- 
[83] 



W\^at i0 (^jsjsenttal 



ments with impartiality by words taken from 
the Gospels, or from the Epistles, from the 
Book of Genesis, or from the Book of Revela- 
tion. What is more pertinent, he would ob- 
serve that these preachers give reverence to the 
utterances of certain Jewish writers, who never 
knew Christ at all, but who lived centuries be- 
fore his day, and that they give to these pre- 
Christian writers more reverence than they are 
wont to accord to any modern Christian student 
of Christ's life. In brief, this intelligent ob- 
server would find the accredited preachers of 
the religion of Christ to be Bible preachers. 
Again, this keen and interested student of the 
Christian religion would observe that in the 
schools where the Christian religion is taught to 
children and youth the only text-book in com- 
mon use is the same single Book. He would 
find the entire body of Christian youths de- 
voting much time to the study of Joshua, and of 
Samson, and of Elijah, gravely and reverently 
considering such incidents of unreligious value 
as the tying of firebrands to the tails of foxes, 
or as the ascent into the clouds of a prophet in 
[84] 



a chariot of fire. But he would note that this 
body of Christian pupils gives Httle, if any at- 
tention to the development of the religion of 
Christ after the first century, that it spends 
practically no time at all upon the discussion of 
present-day Christianity, and that it evidently 
ignores altogether the biographies of Christian 
heroes of modern times as well as the applica- 
tion of Christian principles to modern condi- 
tions. In short, he would find the only recog- 
nized school of the Christian religion to be a 
Bible school. 

Once more, our imaginary Martian visitor 
would discover that among professed Chris- 
tians the question of the authority of their re- 
ligion is apparently inseparable from the ques- 
tion of the authority of this same all-important 
Book. He would learn that no suggestion of 
literary criticism of the Book has ever yet been 
given to the world that has not been supposed 
at first to threaten the spiritual vitality of the 
religion. He would discover that even to this 
day the careful critics of the Bible are held by 
some to be destroyers of the very religion of 
[85] 



3^]^at (js €^^mtial 



Christ. In other words, the questioning student 
of our rehgion would find that the authority of 
the religion seems inextricably confused with 
the question of Biblical interpretation. 
Who could blame this Martian, then, if in view 
of all these observations he should say that he 
perceived that men called themselves Chris- 
tians because they believed in a Book.^ How 
could we justly criticise him if he failed alto- 
gether to discern that Christianity in its essence 
is a manner of Life.^ Nay, more, so long as 
this indiscriminating and exclusive authority is 
given to all of the body of Jewish literature 
which happens to be bound in one volume, how 
can we reasonably expect any real student of 
our religion to escape the error of our imaginary 
student ? 

Yet Jesus himself declared that he was the Way, 
he was the Truth, he was the Life. Most clearly 
indeed did Jesus evidence his own emancipation 
from observances and ceremonies commanded 
by those books which the followers of Jesus 
still hold to be most sacred and authoritative. 
Most emphatically did Jesus teach that vitally 
[86] 



^i^at (j2i t^t tmntial Keljelation 

to believe in him meant really to have fellow- 
ship with his spirit, and that the authority of 
his religion could have no recognized basis ex- 
cept the authority of him who dared to aflSrm, 
"/ say unto you." 

Sec. 2. The Bible; Its Fundamental 
Helpfulness 

Wherein, then, shall we find any need of the 
Bible in the life of the Christian ? 
One suggested answer to this pertinent ques- 
tion is as follows: We, as Christians, need the 
Bible because the Bible is our only source 
of information concerning Christ. Evidently, 
however, this answer is at best only partial. 
The direct information concerning Christ 
which the Bible furnishes is limited to a very 
few pages. We have practically all of it in 
any one of the Synoptic Gospels. Indeed, not 
the whole of any of these Gospels would be 
absolutely necessary for the sole purpose of 
obtaining facts and information concerning 
Christ. For much of each of the Gospels is 
occupied with the observations and deduc- 
[87] 



^i^at i$ (Bmmtial 



tions of the author, and with other Uke extra- 
neous matter. Shall we say that the chapters 
which relate the bare facts of the incidents 
of his life and his simple unedited sayings 
are all that we need from the Bible? This, 
indeed, is a fundamental need of the Book, 
but it is not its whole need. 
A more comprehensive answer to our question 
has been thus suggested. We need the entire 
Bible because it is the setting of the jewel of 
the actual Christ biography. We need the 
Old Testament because it leads up to Christ, 
and the New Testament because it develops 
from Christ. Just as no man's life can be 
thoroughly understood apart from its connec- 
tion with precedent and subsequent events, 
so we cannot hope to know the historic Christ 
apart from the history of his people. This 
also explains in part why the Bible is funda- 
mentally helpful to the Christian, but not 
even yet have we found the complete answer 
to our query. 

It is not simply the historic Christ whom Chris- 
tians need to know. If the Christian be he 
[88] 



who is striving to be actuated by the spirit of 
Christ, and not merely he who seeks to imitate 
the particular things which Christ did, then 
the Christian needs to know more than the 
human setting of the historic Jesus. He needs 
to know the divine setting which was the eternal 
spirit manifested in Jesus. He needs to know 
not only the one actual and supreme example 
of the suffering of eternal love; he needs to 
know the yearning love itself which was thus 
exemplified. To know Jesus Christ is not all 
of that "eternal life" which is but another 
name for the Christlike life. Back of the knowl- 
edge of this one concrete expression of love in 
Christ there must be, according to the Savior's 
own words, the knowledge of "the one true 
God." 

The Bible is a help to the Christian in his 
quest for God. In it he can study the revela- 
tion of God historically, in the relation of Je- 
hovah to the people of Israel. In the Bible 
he can study the revelation of God as an evolu- 
tion, from the crudest conception of a jealous, 
partial, unapproachable and unnamable deity 
[89] 



^l^at i0 Cjijsenttal 



up to the apprehension of Him as the loving, 
forgiving Father of all mankind. In the Bible 
he can study God inspirationally, deriving 
from prophecy and from psalm, from history 
and from legend, from parable and from fact, 
many uplifting and ennobling thoughts of his 
relation to ''Him in whom we live and move 
and have our being." Thus through the Bible 
do we come to know something of Him who 
in essence is a spirit, and whose final defini- 
tion is Love. Thus can we be helped to 
know something of Him whose spirit of love 
Christ tried to show to all the world. The 
Life is the fundamental revelation of Love. 
The Bible is the revelation of that Life's in- 
spiration. 

Sec. 3. The Revelation in Christ 

The life of Christ is to the Christian the most 
fundamental and vital revelation of God. But 
when we think of Christ's life as the revelation 
of God, we must be careful to include all the 
life, — its birth, its development, its ministry, 
its suflFering, and its sacrifice. 
[90] 



WW ijs tt^t c^sijsential Eetelation 

To say that Christ has revealed God only in 
the sacrifice of Calvary is unduly to limit the 
meaning of his life. The death was only the 
end of the life of revelation and, as has been 
suggested in a pre\'ious chapter, the particular 
manner of the death was due to the sinful 
bigotry of the scribes and Pharisees and to 
the sinful cowardice of the Roman Governor, 
Pilate. On the other hand, to say that Christ 
revealed God only because of a supposed 
miracle connected with his advent upon the 
earth is unduly to limit the manifestation of 
God to the unusual, the spectacular, and the 
inexplicable. Those who base their acceptance 
of the revelation of God in Christ only upon 
some theor}^ of sacrificial atonement, or only 
upon some mystery of divine incarnation, are 
alike negligent of the whole meaning and value 
of his life to the struggling Christian. Irre- 
spective of what may seem to the individual 
Christian to be a reasonable theological be- 
lief about Christ's relation to God, all Chris- 
tians may find in him the revelation of God. 
In Christ they are not merely to believe that 
[91] 



WW i^ cB^ssenttal 



God was in the world, in Christ they are really 
to see God in the world. 

In the birth at Bethlehem they are to see, not 
the result of a mystery, but the beginning of a 
life of reality. In the boy's obedience to his 
Nazarene parents, they are to learn that the 
way of the development of the life divine is the 
way of humble submission. In Christ's minis- 
try to the sick and in his tenderness with the 
sinful they are to discern how God deals with 
the unfortunate in body and in soul. In the 
suflfering of Jesus which finds its best expres- 
sion in the words, "How often would I have 
gathered ye, and ye would not" they are to 
catch some glimpse of the suffering, bleeding 
heart of infinite Love rejected. In the blazing 
indignation of this divine man of purity and 
of love, in his scathing denunciation of hypoc- 
risy, and in his fearless cleansing of the syna- 
gogue's corruption, they are to see the reverse 
side of the love of the infinite, the inevitable 
wrath of that divine love against all forms of 
unrepented pride and greed. And, finally, in the 
death on the cross they are to discover some- 
[92] 



thing of the immensity of the love that counts 
no cost of sacrifice too much to pay for the joy 
of service and of helpfulness. 
God was in this life of infantile weakness and 
of natural human development; God was in 
this life of ministry to the needy and of the 
forgiveness of the sinner; God was in this life 
of righteous indignation and of purifying love; 
God was in this life of suffering love and of 
costly sacrifice. Whether we call Jesus the 
Incarnate Son of God, the Sacrificial Atone- 
ment, or the Perfect Man, the fact that his 
life revealed God remains unaltered. 
The Christian who has found God in Christ 
has found his dearest and most vital revela- 
tion both of the Father's love and of the 
Father's will. Without this recognition of 
God in the life of his espoused Master and 
Lord, the Christian is deprived of that divine 
causality which alone can make his religion 
vital and eflficient. To attempt to follow Jesus 
merely as a good man whose life reveals no 
eternal divine essence, is the attempt to measure 
one's religious life by a mere human standard; 
[93] 



Wi^at i^ €^^mtm 



but the attempt to follow God as revealed 
in the life of Jesus connects the Christian's 
Christlike endeavors with the divine purpose, 
and makes the goal of his religious aspiration 
nothing less than the limitless, eternal truth 
and boundless love of God himself. 

Sec. 4. The Revelation in Humanity 

Such a conception of the revelation of God in 
Christ as that suggested in our last section 
necessitates as its corollary the discernment 
of His revelation of HimseK in all humanity. 
If the revelation of God in Christ depended 
upon any theological conception of Christ's 
uniqueness, we might assume that no natural 
man could ever reveal God. But if we dis- 
cern in Christ's life of service and of sacrifice 
a revelation of God which is absolutely inde- 
pendent of any conception of his preexistence 
or of his postexistence, of his miraculous birth 
or of his sacrificial death, then we must admit 
the truth that the same God may be revealed 
in a similar way by any human being. We 
must then recognize that God is revealed in 
[94] 



Wt^at i^ t^t tmntial muiation 

all acts of love and of service performed by 
any of his children anywhere. We must rec- 
ognize in all humanity the capacity for God. 
The Christian who can thus discern in his 
fellow men the revelation of God does thereby 
establish a basis for hopeful Christian service 
without which his Christian life would be 
narrow, one-sided, and inefficient. This Chris- 
tian sees in all men, even the basest, the possi- 
bility of Godlikeness. He touches the life of 
the individual sinner with the expectant hope 
that the touch will prove effective because of a 
response from the indwelling germ of divine- 
ness. He works for the redemption of society, 
inspired and emboldened to appeal to the moral 
consciousness of men by the assurance that the 
so-called "public conscience" is the evidence of 
the indwelling God. He hopes for the ultimate 
victory of justice and of purity, of honor and of 
righteousness, because he sees God in men and 
he knows that greater is He who is within them 
than any power of evil outside them. 
Again, the Christian who has found the revela- 
tion of God in humanity has discerned his 
[95] 



a^i^at ijs Cjs^ential 



own relation to humanity. To this man the 
human race is not a conglomeration of unre- 
lated individuals, but a molecule of which 
every individual is a needed atom. When he 
has seen God in his fellow men, the Christian 
has caught some glimpse of the meaning of 
divine brotherhood. He has made some ad- 
vance in the perception of the one divine 
family whose Father is God and whose ideal 
is unity with God. Perceiving the unity of 
the family of God, he has conceived himself 
as an essential part of the divine family, an 
entity in the unity, an individuality with in- 
dividual powers and functions, — but a needed 
member with all his fellow men in the one 
divine brotherhood. 

The brotherhood of man is conditioned not 
only by the Fatherhood of God, but by the 
existence of a divine parental likeness in every 
human being. So the Christian, who to be a 
Christian must live in brotherly relations with 
his fellows, must be able to discern God's pres- 
ence in them all. The nature of his Christian 
service is not to bring God into men's lives, 
196] 



but to help them in their lives to manifest the 
God-Spirit already there. 

In the life of Christ the Christian sees the 
revelation of God in that life's uninterrupted 
sinlessness and in its perfect love. In the 
lives of other men he sees the revelation of 
God in their occasional victories and benefac- 
tions. In the lives of all men he sees the reve- 
lation of God in their potential victory over 
sin and in their power of righteousness. Pat- 
terning his life after the most perfect revelation 
he follows God in Christ, and thus he helps 
to bring men to a realization of the God in 
themselves. 

Sec. 5. The True Test of all Inspired Revelation 

In the previous sections of this chapter we 
have tried to suggest the fundamental help- 
fulness to the Christian of the Biblical revela- 
tion, and the vital way in which he may view 
the revelation of God both in Christ and in all 
humanity. But we have not yet exhausted 
all the ways in which God reveals Himself to 
men, nor could the subject be treated exhaust- 
[97] 



Wm (js C^jsenttal 



ively within the hmits of any one volume. 
Here there can be indicated only the sure test 
of all divine revelation. 

The test of an inspired revelation of God is 
the measure of its inspiration of men. When 
we apply this test to the Bible, we cannot be- 
lieve either that all portions of the Bible are 
equally inspired, or that the possibilities of writ- 
ten revelation have been exhausted in canon- 
ical scriptures. ^Mien we apply the test to the 
life of Christ, we cannot believe either that all 
acts of Christ reveal God with equal force and 
power, or that all the possible li^ang revela- 
tions of God were exhausted in this one su- 
preme revelation. 

Let us apply the test more in detail. First, to 
written revelation. What writing contains the 
more inspiring revelation of God, — the book 
of Esther wherein God is not once named, or 
the book of the '' Pilgrim's Progress " wherein 
the soul experiences of the aspirant after a 
godly life are most clearly portrayed.^ Shall 
we give to the love poems of the Song of Solo- 
mon a position of sacred honor which we shall 
[98] 



W^at tj8 t^t €0jsent(al JRetielatfon 

deny to the poems of John Milton ? Shall we 
reverence the history of the children of Israel 
of a thousand years before Christ, and not 
reverence the Christian history of all the 
children of God of a thousand and more years 
after Christ ? Shall we find an inspiring reve- 
lation of God in the account of an ancient 
people's ascent from slavery, and find no in- 
spiring revelation of the same God in the rec- 
ord of a modern people's advancement in 
civilization ? Shall we derive religious inspi- 
ration from the homilies and exhortations of 
Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and deny 
all inspirational value to the sermons of Spur- 
geon and Beecher and Brooks and Moody? 
Shall we attribute to the personal letter of 
Paul addressed to his friend Philemon a vital 
religious helpfulness which we shall deny to 
be present in the letters of a foreign missionary 
in Africa or in India addressed to his praying 
friends and supporters in America? Shall we 
conceive that John's vision on the Isle of 
Patmos was inspired, and that Lowell's 
" Vision of Sir Launfal" was uninspired ? 
[99] 



W\^at ijs cBjSisential 



When we ask ourselves such questions as these, 
the truth confronts us that the vital Christian 
revelation cannot be limited to the writings of 
any age or of any people. The real value of the 
writing is to be measured only by the good it 
inspires in the reader. The test of its inspira- 
tion lies not in its canonicity, but in its helpful- 
ness. 

When we apply this test, the measure of its in- 
spiring power, to the living revelation in Christ, 
we must ask such questions as these: Must we 
believe that Christ's reported blasting of the 
fig tree presents an inspiring revelation of God 
just because it was done by Christ ? Must we 
say that the recorded spectacular appearance 
of Jesus walking upon the water is of as much 
inspirational value to us as the account of his un- 
selfish prayer for his murderers ? Can we find 
God in the cures of Jesus whose method we do 
not yet understand, and fail to find Him in the 
more numerous but after all more wonder- 
ful cures of modern physicians accomplished 
through the understanding of God's laws and 
the application of God's remedies? Because 
[100] 



W^^at (js ti^e tmmtial Eebelatto 

the sacrifice of Jesus seems to us to manifest 
the supreme love of God must we therefore 
deny the existence of any revelation of God's 
love in the redemptive suffering of martyred 
Christians, of patriotic and heroic soldiers 
murdered in the cause of justice, or of yearn- 
ing, anxious parents dying of broken hearts for 
their wayward sons and daughters ? 
Just to ask these questions is to suggest their 
answers. There is only one healing, redeem- 
ing power in all the universe. It is God's 
power. Wherever and by whomsoever we see 
the process of redemption going on, there we 
know that we see the revelation of God's 
power. So there is only one kind of real love 
in the world. It is God's kind, the kind that is 
unselfish to the cost of sacrifice. Wherever and 
in whomsoever we see the sacrifice of unselfish- 
ness, there we see the revelation of the love that 
is God's. The religious value of the revealing 
life of Jesus of Nazareth or of the life of any 
other man, is to be measured wholly by the 
good influence of that life. Again, the test of 
its inspiration by God and of its revelation of 
[101] 



W\^at ijs t^^mtial 



God, is to be estimated by its power to inspire 
and help others. 

It is significant that Jesus evidently found more 
inspiration in contemporary events than in the 
sacred writings of his people. The texts of his 
sermons were suggested by Nature more often 
than by the Law or the Prophets. His truths 
were enforced by parables more than by Bib- 
lical citations. To him, God was revealed in 
the self-sacrificing generosity of the widow with 
her two mites as well as in the commandments 
of Moses, — in the beautiful adornment of the 
lilies of the field as well as in the prophecies of 
Isaiah and of Jeremiah. 

To know God as Jesus knew him is the Chris- 
tian's ideal, and whatever reveals to him God is 
the vital Christian revelation. He may find the 
revelation of God in writings called sacred or 
secular. He may find the revelation in a scien- 
tific treatise ; he may find it in history or in bi- 
ography ; he may find it even in some recorded 
event of current history, in some newspaper 
item of the biography of the living. He may 
find God in ancient poetry or in modern poetry, 
[10^] 



I^l^at iji ti^e cBjSjSentfal Betjelatton 

in psalm or in hymn, in prophecy or in sermon. 
He may find Him revealed in the written pages 
of books, or in the more beautiful unwritten 
pages of Nature. But wherever or however he 
may find God, revealed in His majesty and 
wisdom and beneficence and love, there has he 
found the very essence of the Christian revela- 
tion. 

To the Christian, as to Jesus, the essential Chris- 
tian revelation is all that, and only that, which to 
him manifests God. 



[103] 



CHAPTER FIFTH 







Sec. 1. The Historic Church 

FTER the death of Jesus his 
disciples fell into the habit 
of assembling themselves to- 
gether for confession, for mu- 
tual encouragement, and for 
united helpfulness. The first 
of such assemblies as recorded in the narrative 
of the Acts of the Apostles occurred in the upper 
room at Jerusalem, possibly the same room 
wherein Jesus in company with his disciples 
had celebrated the last Passover. 
The room was hallowed by sacred memories. 
Just as many a bereaved heart has experienced 
a sense of the nearness of the departed in some 
spot beloved for its intimate associations, so here 
the bereaved disciples of Jesus came close to the 
spiritual presence of him whom they mourned. 
[105] 



WW i^ e^^mtial 



It was natural that in this hallowed place the 
disciples should receive new inspiration con- 
cerning the nature of the work they were to do 
in the name of Christ, as well as an endowment 
of power for the accompHshment of that work. 
Out from this meeting place they went to teach 
and to preach, and to make converts to their 
cause. From the meeting there thus developed 
the beginning of the propaganda of the Chris- 
tian religion. 

By insensible degrees, however, the public 
assembly began to assume new prerogatives. 
After a while the Christians came together no 
longer merely for confession, for inspiration, 
and for power; they came together for the dis- 
cussion of doctrine and for the establishment of 
government. No thoughtful person will say 
that either was unnecessary. The rapidly in- 
creasing number of Christ's followers could 
never have become a force in the world without 
organization, and no organization could have 
been efficient which did not seek both to sat- 
isfy men's intellects, and to command their alle- 
giance. Hence the beginning of the Church as 
[106] 



WW i^ tl^^ (BmntiaX €t)nu]) 

we know it to-day, not simply an assembly of 
Christians, but an organization of Christians, 
adhering to some form of government and 
avowing some kind of doctrine. 
It was natural that the doctrine which the 
organized followers of Jesus avowed should 
become more and more particularized as the 
years passed by. But as the doctrines became 
attenuated, there inevitably arose diversities 
of opinion. Whereas all Christians could be 
agreed, for instance, in the doctrine that Christ 
was their Savior, when men began to ques- 
tion as to how he became their Savior there 
followed necessarily endless discussions. On 
general truths men can be generally united; 
upon the specific, explanatory details of those 
truths, we may expect that they will always be 
divided. 

Moreover, not only did the doctrines of the 
Church become particularized, but the govern- 
ment of the Church became abused. The recog- 
nized heads of the Church, in theory successors 
to Peter and to Christ himself, became in prac- 
tice too much the seekers after their own selfish 
[107] 



W^at i^ C^jSential 



ends. The government of the Church was used 
for the furtherance of men's private greed, and 
for the usurpation of temporal authority. 
The great Protestant movement was in reality 
a demand for the restoration in the Church's 
government of the principle of Christ's unself- 
ishness. But Protestantism in turn came to 
manifest a tendency to the arrogant assump- 
tion of authority. And in Protestant churches 
the abuse of power has given rise to new prot- 
estations, and new divisions, until one wonders 
if the divisive process will ever end. 
By these two influences, the particularization 
of doctrine and the abuse of the power of gov- 
ernment, it has come to pass that the Church 
Universal is to-day apparently universal in 
little more than its name. After nearly twenty 
centuries of Christian history it has been es- 
timated that there are at present one hundred 
and eighty-six different sects of Christians. 
They differ from each other on matters of doc- 
trine and of ritual and of government. All 
are avowedly based upon the authority of the 
one Christ. But they do not all sympathet- 
[108] 



ically try to understand each other's point of 
view, while some even refuse to recognize as 
real Christians all those who do not worship 
with themselves. Meanwhile, the unchurched 
masses look at the minutely divided Church 
with amazement, sometimes with amusement. 
And when they see professed Christian men 
and women zealous only for the welfare of their 
own church and often jealous of the prosperity 
of a neighboring church, they think, and some 
of them say, that the professed religion of Jesus 
is indistinguishable from a narrow and bigoted 
ecclesiasticism. 

Sec. 2. The Church, a Means to an End 

There is some excuse for the unchurched ob- 
server's mistake in confusing Christianity with 
ecclesiasticism, for indeed many church people 
are apparently more interested in the main- 
tenance of the prosperity of their own particu- 
lar church than in the promotion of Christ's 
universal kingdom of love. 
There are church people, for instance, who 
seem to feel that they have done their whole 
[109] 



WW t0 Cjsjsenttal 



Christian duty if they but pay money into their 
own church's treasury. Some of these people 
give most generously and liberally. They erect 
costly church edifices, which they furnish lux- 
uriously. Their church is richly carpeted. 
Their pews are deeply cushioned. Their me- 
morial windows are most magnificent. Their 
organ is as expensive as it is sonorous. The 
choir of their church is widely advertised as the 
most liberally paid of any in the city. Their 
preacher is the most eloquent who can be lured 
from some smaller and more plebeian congrega- 
tion by the pressing necessity of a larger salary. 
And some of the supporters of this richly en- 
dowed church sit comfortably in their cush- 
ioned pews of a Sunday morning in the smug 
self-satisfaction that they have ministered unto 
the Lord, when really they have but provided 
themselves with the beautiful things that are 
pleasing to their own cultured eyes, and with 
the melodious sounds that are soothing to their 
own aesthetic ears. For men to provide for 
themselves a suitable place wherein to worship 
God ought not to be considered in itself any 
[110] 



more really a Christian enterprise than for them 
to provide for themselves a place wherein they 
can eat and sleep, or a place wherein they can 
mingle with their exclusive friends in social 
intercourse and amusement. 
Nor is this all. Many church people, who would 
scorn to think they had done all of their Chris- 
tian duty by giving money to their own church, 
seem to think that they have done all that can 
be required of them by giving time to the 
church. To these the end of the Christian life 
seems to be not merely the maintenance of a 
beautiful church building, but the maintenance 
of the conventional institutions of a churchly 
activity. These go always to the Sunday morn- 
ing and evening services of their church. They 
attend its midweek prayer meeting or lecture. 
They send their children to Sunday School and 
their young people to its Christian Endeavor 
Society. They belong to its Men's Club or to 
its Women's Sewing Circle. They patronize 
its socials, its entertainments, and its fairs. 
They expect their hired minister to give all his 
time and energy to the maintenance of this 

[111] 



W\^at tjs (B^^mtial 



little round of ecclesiastical activity, and they 
estimate the help their church may be in God's 
kingdom only by the size of its prayer meeting, 
by the attendance at its social functions, and 
by the increase of its own membership. But 
meanwhile, for men to maintain an actively 
flourishing church may not in itself be any 
more truly a Christlike activity than for them 
to maintain a flourishing business or a flourish- 
ing lodge or a flourishing club. 
The Church at its very best is only a means to 
an end, never an end in itself. The one end of 
the Church's existence is the promotion of the 
religion of Jesus. 

If this proposition needed any demonstration 
the history of the foundation of the church 
would be sufficient. The Church was estab- 
lished by Christians from motives of expedi- 
ency and from the felt need for fellowship and 
collective instruction. It was not organized 
for the promotion of its own welfare, but to help 
Christians in the promotion of their Christian 
living. Historically, the Church, like the Sab- 
bath, was made for man, not man for the Church. 
[112] 



If Christians no longer need the Church to help 
them to live Christ's life, then the Church has 
no reason for its continued existence. Surely 
no church has the right to demand the devo- 
tion and homage of the Christian people of the 
twentieth century just because the Christians 
of the first century found it advisable and help- 
ful to come together in the public assembly for 
worship, for instruction, for mutual comfort, 
and for fraternal fellowship. The Church can- 
not be considered as divine in its inception and 
divine in its continued existence apart from its 
continued helpfulness to men. 
And just as the Church itself has no reason for 
existence apart from its usefulness, so no spe- 
cialized activity of the Church can be con- 
sidered necessary which has lost its power of 
helpfulness. If the prayer meeting cannot be 
helpful to the promotion of Christian living 
there is no reason why it should be maintained. 
If the socials cannot minister to the Christian 
welfare of men, they should be abandoned. 
The Church and all customary avenues of the 
Church's activity are of use only as they have 
[113] 



W\^at i^ cBjs^enttal 



in themselves the power to inspire men and to 
help men to hve hke Christ. The end of these 
churchly activities is not their own prosperity 
and UveHness, the end is their service in the 
promotion of the kingdom of God. 

Sec. 3. The Distinctive Function of the Church 

As has been indicated in the preceding section, 
it is the one distinctive function of the Church 
to promote the Christian Hfe, — not only the 
Christian life of its own constituency but also 
the Christian life of the community and of the 
world. 

To accomplish this one purpose of its existence, 
the Church must do more than to furnish a form 
of worship which shall be pleasing to its own 
members. It must furnish a worship that shall 
be vital and strengthening. The worship must 
be nutritious. It must be in the nature of spir- 
itual food which the worshipers can assimilate 
and digest, and which shall strengthen them 
for the toils and trials and temptations of their 
daily life. It is the object of the Church not 
merely to bring its members to worship God, 
[114] 



but through their worship to strengthen them 
for the service of men. 

The Church must do more than to teach theo- 
logical truths and to expound Biblical passages. 
It must apply the truths to the present needs, 
not only of the listening congregation, but of 
society at large to which this one congregation 
must minister. It must not, then, be content 
with teaching the truth, it must inspire right- 
eousness. It must send men out of the Church, 
not merely saying, ''How true this is which I 
have heard to-day" but saying, "How impera- 
tive it is that I should try to do what I have 
heard this day." It is not the function of the 
Church to make men believe, but to make 
them do. 

The Church must do more than to equip gym- 
nasiums and maintain industrial bureaus. It 
must do more than to establish evening schools 
and to provide secular instruction. It must do 
more even than to convert its assembly rooms 
into clinics, and to advertise to cure the sick 
either by faith or by hypnotism, or by the 
vaunted knowledge of the nothingness of matter 
[115] 



^]^at tjs tmmtial 



and the allness of mind. All these physiolog- 
ical, industrial and intellectual activities are, 
indeed, Christian activities, but they can best 
be performed by agencies wholly divorced from 
the Church, by those men who are free from all 
possible charge of narrow denominationalism, 
by those who have been specially trained for 
these specific parts of a truly Christian ministry. 
But the Church must do more than these inas- 
much as the source and the inspiration of any 
movement are more than the movement itseK. 
The Church must inspire men to do under these 
other Christian agencies this needed work of 
ministry to others. It is not the function of the 
Church to usurp the work of its industrial and 
social allies in the promotion of God's Kingdom, 
but so to interpret the religion of Jesus and so 
to apply it to present conditions as to inspire 
men to work with and through these allies for 
the betterment of mankind. 
The Church must do more than to purify 
politics, to enforce law, or to cleanse munici- 
palities. The Church cannot be a poHtical 
power, not even a political purifying power. 
[116] 



The union of the State with the Church worked 
disastrously for both. The assumption by 
the Church of the functions of the State must 
always end in disaster. But again, the Church 
must do more than this in that the Church 
must inculcate such a love for purity and 
righteousness and such a hatred for vice and 
sin as shall send men out from the Church on 
fire with the righteous indignation of avenging 
angels. With the *' sword of the spirit " and with 
the '' breastplate of righteousness," the Church 
must equip the soldiers of the army of God 
who, under the flag of patriotic citizenship, 
must fight the manifold forms of evil in both 
municipality and nation; aye, and who will 
fight until the victory of God is won. 
It follows, finally, that the Church must do 
more than to seek to increase its roll of mem- 
bers. The end of the Church's existence is not 
to make church members but to make work- 
ing, helpful Christians. Instead of being con- 
tent to get men into the Church, the Church 
must be satisfied only when it sends men out 
from the Church to serve other men. 
[117] 



I^i^at (js CjSjSenttal 



To interpret the religion of Jesus and to apply 
that religion to present conditions and to pres- 
ent needs; to inspire men to live Christ's re- 
ligion, to do in the world the work of ministry 
to the needy and of salvation to the sinful, — 
to do the same kind of work to-day which 
Jesus did in the first century in Judea and 
Galilee; — this is the one essential function of 
the Christian church. If it is doing this work, 
its denominational name is of little interest, 
its professed theology of little concern, its 
accepted ritual an immaterial matter. If it 
is not doing this work, no power of Pope or of 
Synod, of presbytery or of episcopacy, can 
save it from its deserved fate of annihilation. 
Observers differ as to the real helpfulness of 
the present Christian Church. Some writers 
are marshaling the statistics of church mem- 
bership and of church attendance, and from 
these they are making the deduction that the 
Church is declining in power and in influence. 
Such statistics are utterly worthless, and the 
conclusions drawn from them must be con- 
sidered null and void; for the value of any 
[118] 



1 



church, — its real value to the Kingdom of 
God, — is to be measured not by the size of its 
membership or of its weekly congregations, 
but by the extent of its influence in the world. 
How many men are being inspired in the 
Church and by the Church to live useful lives, 
to be faithful and helpful in their homes, 
honest and industrious in their business, clean 
and patriotic in their citizenship, kind and 
patient in their friendship, thoughtful and 
generous in their benevolence ? These sta- 
tistics are not at hand. But so long as one 
man has been helped by the Church to be a 
better man, the Church has justified its exist- 
ence. And the Church which has helped 
any can help all. 

Sec. 4. The Assistance of Church Membership 

Let us see now more in detail just what the 
Christian needs from a church. Since historic- 
ally there were Christians before there was any 
church at all, logically it follows that there 
may be Christians outside the Church. Chris- 
tians, then, do not need the Church as a basis 
[119] 



WW i^ Cjljsetttial 



of their Christianity. No man can become a 
Christian simply by joining a church, and no 
church can justly claim that those not in its 
membership are therefore not Christians. A 
man is a Christian first, because he is trying 
to be actuated by the spirit of Christ. He may 
become a church member afterwards, because 
through the organization of the Church he 
believes he can best confess his Christian pur- 
pose and assist in Christian activity. 
The fundamental assistance of church mem- 
bership to the Christian is this : the Church in 
its purity offers to the individual Christian 
the means of public confession; it offers, too, 
the assistance of a mutual encouragement, 
and the opportunity for united effort. Since 
no man who is a social being can live any 
phase of his life alone, he cannot expect to 
live his Christian life alone. If he is really 
Christlike, he will try to make others more 
Christlike. If he is soundly logical, he will 
perceive that he can do this best in fellow- 
ship with others who are actuated by like 
motives. 

[ 120 ] 



But which one of the various churches shall 
the Christian select as most helpful to himself ? 
Unfortunately he has not perfect freedom of 
choice. The insistence of churches upon the 
acceptance of a detailed theology has excluded 
many an earnest Christian from their helpful 
fellowship, and the standard of membership 
must be modified before many Christian men 
of intellectual candor can honestly unite with 
the Church. No church should demand as 
its basis of membership anything other than a 
declaration of Christian purpose and an assent 
to a simple covenant, promising personal 
allegiance to the church and brotherly regard 
for all its members. If all churches should 
agree in demanding this, and this only, the 
much desired day of church unity would be 
at hand. So long as churches insist upon 
particular interpretations of dogma, so long 
will the day of union be delayed. The Church 
in its essence belongs rightly to all Christians, 
whatever may be their different interpreta- 
tions of theological doctrine. But we must 
bring the Church back to the original purity 
[121] 



WW i^ €00enttal 



of that assembly in the upper room at Jerusa- 
lem before we can expect it to be to Christians 
all that ideally it should be. 
Yet no Christian should refrain from joining 
the Church because he fancies some of its mem- 
bers may be narrow bigots. Among the great 
variety of churches offered, it would seem that 
every man ought to find some one wherein he 
can conscientiously hope to advance the King- 
dom of God upon the earth, and through 
whose organization he can do Christlike work 
shoulder to shoulder with his fellows. There 
is an avowed sensitiveness concerning church 
creeds and dogmas which sometimes amounts 
to an excuse for the neglect of duty. Granted 
that the churches of the day need purification, 
granted that the most of them cling too closely 
to the traditions of men and do not follow 
closely enough the spirit of Jesus, the best 
way to purify the Church is not to stand out- 
side to criticise but to go in to cleanse. 
The strong, broad-minded Christians who are 
trying to live their life outside the Church 
could do much to make the Church what it 
[122] 



ought to be if they only would. The Church 
needs them, and they need the Church. The 
Church needs the help and the personal alle- 
giance of all Christians in its efforts to Chris- 
tianize the world. All Christians need the 
Church in their efforts to follow Christ. Or- 
ganization gives power. Public confession 
generates personal responsibility. Fellowship 
brings courage and strength. These things 
the Church can give to the Christian. All 
these the Christian needs if he is really to live 
the Christlike life. 

Sec. 5. The Value of Public Worship 

When a biographer of Robert Louis Stevenson 
said of that illustrious author that "he was 
too broad to worship God within the narrow 
confines of any church edifice," he did not 
mean his readers to infer that Mr. Stevenson 
was irreligious. Indeed, quite the contrary. 
The writer meant in substance to assert that 
to Mr. Stevenson religious worship seemed 
something too sublime and too divine to be 
confined within the doors of human workman- 
[123] 



W}^at i^ Cjsisential 



ship, something too personal and too private to 
be paraded in pubKc, something which in its 
nature was too exclusively a matter between 
God and the individual to be shared with any 
other human being. The writer would have us 
believe that in order to preserve the sublimity 
of his religion as well as to preserve his own 
independence, Mr. Stevenson went " alone into 
the woods to worship God," and refused to 
worship with his fellow men in some church 
edifice. 

The genuineness of Mr. Stevenson's religious 
nature is not here called in question. There 
may be some natures who do not feel the need 
for themselves of participation in any form of 
public worship, but no man can live his Chris- 
tian life only for himself. A genuinely religious 
man may find all he needs to receive from wor- 
ship in the woods alone with God, but the 
truly Christian man cannot expect to give all 
that he ought in worship except in the public 
assembly. The fundamental helpfulness of 
private worship is to get from God. An added 
helpfulness in public worship is to give to men. 
[124] 



True worship has its social as well as its per- 
sonal value. It is, indeed, first of all a matter 
between the individual soul and God, but just 
because it is that, it becomes therefore a matter 
between the individual soul and other souls. 
The closer one comes to the divine love, the 
more will one's heart be filled with human 
love. If, indeed, the Christian by worship 
comes near to God, he therefore by the same 
act comes nearer to all his fellows. 
Hence the value of public worship, not that 
men should be "heard for their much speak- 
ing," or reverenced either for their many 
prayers or for their pious genuflections; but 
that the worshipful heart of the individual 
may communicate something of its worshipful 
spirit to his neighbor, and that the soul aspir- 
ing to God may help by its own aspiration to 
bear some other soul nearer to Him. 
When a man looks for the first time at the 
sublimity of the great Falls of Niagara, or 
when he but witnesses an unusually glorious 
sunset, if he be a man who has known human 
love, he wishes that his loved one might stand 
[125] 



WW ijs Cjsigential 



at his side to share with him the inspiration 
of the moment. If that loved one be by his 
side, then the two sympathetic souls are drawn 
closer together by this experience of their 
mutual adoration of the sublime. 
So when the soul looks upward to God, there 
should naturally follow the wish for human 
companionship. If the friend be by the side 
of the worshiper, the two are drawn closer 
together in their human love by this act of 
their aspiration for the divine. There may be 
some pathetically lonely souls who prefer to 
stand without human companionship in the 
presence of the manifestations of God. But 
these are they who know nothing of the inevi- 
table human overflow of the true worship of 
the divine. 

One could wish that Mr. Stevenson had been 
able to discern that the public worshipers of 
God were not bound by the narrow walls of 
the church edifice, but by the natural ties of 
similar aims and of common purposes. Had 
he discerned this, he might have been able to 
help others by sharing with them his religious 
[ 126 ] 



aspirations, just as he helped so many by shar- 
ing with them his Hterary genius. 
To help others, this is the fundamental aim of 
the Christian, and he must not lose sight of 
this aim in his worship of God any more than 
in his more direct service for men. The most 
valuable assistance which the Church has yet 
been able to give to the Christian has been 
the assistance of public worship. Wherever 
the element of public worship has been mini- 
mized in the Church, there the helpfulness of 
the Church has been most meager. Should 
this function of the Church's activity conceiv- 
ably be omitted altogether, it is as well con- 
ceivable that the Church would soon cease to 
exist. 

We must, of course, leave the particular form 
of public worship to the choice of the individual. 
He will be guided to his choice by youthful 
training and by present environment. He 
may be influenced by the limitations of oppor- 
tunity, and by the demands of expediency. 
Insistence upon any form should not be a 
matter of conscience to any follower of him 
[127] 



WW (sj c^jsjsential 



who taught that not "in this mountain nor 
yet in Jerusalem" but "in spirit and in truth," 
should men worship the Father who is a 
Spirit. 

The Christian who is not unduly stiflF or un- 
sympathetically prejudiced ought to be able 
to worship not only alone in the woods, but 
also in whatever place and in whatever way 
he may find his brethren honestly striving to 
worship the Father of all mankind. When 
thus he tries to einbody in form or in ritual 
the sincere spirit of the true worshiper, he will 
always find help. He will find help for himself 
because the act of worship will bring him out 
of himself and into a closer touch with the in- 
finite God. But, what is of more consequence, 
he will also find the usefulness of his Christian 
life increased by the overflow from his act of 
worship which will touch with helpful sjTQpathy 
and uplifting power the hearts of all who wor- 
ship with him. 

The essential Christian Church i^ the assembly 

of all those who in their worship would seek to 

help others as well as themselves. It is the 

[128] 



organization of those who, by the public pro- 
fession of their Christian purpose and by 
the mutual participation of their Christian serv- 
ice, try to minister to others in the spirit of 
Christ. 



[129] 



CHAPTER SIXTH 

Sec. 1. Christianity and Personal Salvation 

FAVORITE word often upon 
the lips of the Great Teacher 
of the Christian religion was 
the word " Watch. " He bade 
his hearers watch, for they 
knew "neither the day nor 
the hour wherein the Son of man cometh." 
(Matt. 25: 13.) He enjoined the spirit of vigi- 
lance upon his disciples, whose weary bodies 
would not let them watch with him for one 
hour. They were to watch, "that they enter 
not into temptation." (Matt. 26:41.) 
It seems evident from these and other similar 
instructions of Jesus that in his mind vigilance 
was one of the requisite modes of true Chris- 
tian activity. It was not merely a vigilance 
imposed by the possible unexpectedness of 
[1311 




I^i^at i^ Cjs^ential 



death, but a vigilance imposed by the exigencies 
of hfe. 

We are very wrong if we think his parable of 
the ten virgins had reference only to the com- 
ing of the angel of death. The Bridegroom 
does not come only to take men out of the 
world, but also to fit them to live in the world. 
Christians are not just to watch that they may 
be ready to go to heaven when they die; they 
are to watch that they may be ready to make 
this world more like heaven while they live. 
The Bridegroom is the opportunity for serv- 
ice. The opportunity comes at the most unex- 
pected moment. Sometimes, therefore, it finds 
men ready, and sometimes unready. Some 
have supplied the lamps of their personalities 
with the equipment which enables them to 
grasp the opportunity; and some dillydallying, 
lackadaisical souls have neglected to provide 
the necessary personal equipment, indulging 
the fond and futile hope that they can grasp 
the opportunity and shine in the world with no 
need of a costly and painstaking preparation. 
The figure of the parable thus understood 
[132] 



Wm tjs ti^e emntial actttitt 

clearly interprets the significance of Christ's 
command to watch, and becomes most sug- 
gestive to us in our attempt to understand the 
nature of real and efficient Christian activity. 
The watchfulness necessary in the Christian 
is the preparedness of personal development. 
It is not enough for the Christian to have good 
intentions; he must fit himself for the accom- 
plishment of good intentions. Neither to 
mean to keep from evil nor to mean to do good 
will make one a strong and active Christian; 
only a preparedness to resist the evil and a 
readiness to embrace the good will make his 
professed Christianity really worth while. Both 
according to Christ's teaching and according to 
the experience of the human race, every true 
man must be prepared for two emergencies: 
on the one hand he must be ready to meet 
the temptation to do evil, and on the other he 
must be ready for the opportunities to do good. 
He must watch for the coming both of the 
" devil ' ' and of the " Son of man. " The " devil ' ' 
comes to him as an angel of light, wearing many 
and varying guises of allurement. The " Son of 
[ 133 ] 



^]^at ij2J CjSjSential 



man" comes to him in the person of every 
needy soul whom he ought to help and whom 
he might help if he were only ready. 
Therefore it is a part of the true Christian 
activity for every man to see that the lamp of 
his own personality is fully equipped. He must 
make and keep himself as strong physically 
as it is possible for him to be. He must ob- 
serve the laws of health and of hygiene. He 
must exercise in the open air. He must be not 
merely a total abstainer from some things, 
but temperate in his use of all things. He 
may need every ounce of his possible physical 
strength some day to resist a strong tempta- 
tion or to rescue a neighbor from danger. Aye, 
he needs his strength every day to meet the 
daily temptations and to help him to bear the 
trials and to perform the duties of his every- 
day life. 

The Christian, too, must cultivate his mind. 
He must not only study the thoughts of others; 
he must learn to think for himself. He should 
be clearly sure of his own position upon all 
questions of domestic, industrial, social, po- 
[134] 



litical, and religious importance. He must be 
able "to give a reason for the faith that is in 
him." This, too, because a clear mind is one 
of the best defenses against the insidious 
suggestions of evil, and because by his clear 
thinking he will always be ready for the oppor- 
tunity to illuminate the pathway of his ques- 
tioning, doubting, despairing friend. 
Also, the true Christian must attend to the 
distinctively spiritual equipment of his per- 
sonality. He must use the means of spirit- 
ual exercise which are the most beneficial to 
himself, whether that exercise consists for the 
most part in private prayer and personal 
devotions or whether it be found in the more 
energetic wrestlings with the powers of evil. 
He must keep his own "conscience void of 
offense towards God," for thus only will he 
be able to withstand the "fiery darts of the 
evil," and thus only will he win the confidence 
of those men in need whom he must be ever 
ready to help. 

All these are distinctly personal equipments. 

They are things which every man must get 

[135] 



I^i^at (0 Cjsjsenttal 



for himself or go without. The wise virgins 
did not give to their fooHsh sisters because 
they were contemptibly stingy, but because 
they were unable to give what was required. 
"You can drive a horse to water but you can- 
not make him drink." You can tell the youth 
the underlying principles of health and strength, 
but you cannot give him a strong body. You 
may show him the way of knowledge, but you 
cannot make him learned. You may expound 
to men moral and religious precepts, but the 
men will continue immoral and irreligious so 
long as they will. There are some things 
which every man must ''go and buy" for 
himself; and the cost price of these things 
must be paid in the hard coin of one's own 
personal experiences. 

So there is a true sense in which some of the 
activity of the Christian is concerned only 
with himself. And here is the excuse for 
preachers' continued insistence upon the ne- 
cessity of personal salvation. Define personal 
salvation as personal equipment for service; 
describe the method of its attainment as that 
[ 136 ] 



spirit of watchfulness which seeks to be always 
prepared; remember that the end of the sal- 
vation is not merely heaven for one's self, but 
heaven for others; and we have before us the 
true relation of the Christian's personal salva- 
tion to the vital Christian activity. To watch 
with every fortification of defense guarded 
that he may not fall into temptation ; to watch 
with every implement of service prepared for 
instant use that he may be ready for the oppor- 
tunity of helpfulness: — this must always be 
done by the man who would take his part in 
the activity of the religion of Jesus. 

Sec. 2. Christianity and Personal Sacrifice 

Most Christian teachers have agreed that all 
truly Christian activity must involve some 
personal sacrifice. But agreeing in the neces- 
sity of the sacrifice they have disagreed both as 
to its purpose and nature. 
The purpose of the sacrifice has sometimes 
been taught as the propitiation of God. This 
was apparently the purpose sought by the 
children of Israel in their sacrifices of the first 
[137] 



WW tjs Cjsjsenttal 



fruits of the harvest and of the best animals 
of the flocks and herds. The underlying idea 
of these ''burnt offerings" seems to have been 
not merely to show their gratitude to God for 
past favors, but to insure his continued benevo- 
lence. The God of the people of the Exodus 
was conceived as a jealous God. That He 
might not turn away His face in anger, these 
uninstructed slaves offered Him the best of 
their possessions. 

It would be unnecessary in this enlightened 
age to speak of this mistaken conception of 
the purpose of sacrifice were there not so many 
evidences of the persistence of the crude idea 
even in the minds of those who supposedly 
have learned something of the true nature of 
God's love from Christ himself. There are 
some Christian people whose whole religious 
activity seems to partake of this nature of a 
propitiatory sacrifice. They go to church be- 
cause they feel that church attendance will be 
pleasing to God. They abstain from certain 
amusements and self-indulgences because their 
self-denials will win God's approval. They 
[138] 



give their money to charities and to benevo- 
lences, not always because they want to help 
these worthy and needy causes, but sometimes 
because in some way they believe their gifts 
will win them divine favor, or, in their own 
vernacular, "bring them good luck." 
The reason that none of these so-called sacri- 
jfices can be called true Christian activity is 
because they all arise from a spirit of selfish- 
ness. When one denies himself some present 
desire for something in the future which he 
believes will be more desirable, we rightly 
call him prudent, but such selfish prudence 
does not entitle him to the holy name of Chris- 
tian. All self-denials for the purpose of win- 
ning God's favor must be catalogued only under 
the head of deeds of prudence. If the children 
of Israel believed that God's favor was worth 
keeping, and that it could not be continued 
in their behalf without the sacrifice of rams 
and bullocks, they did wisely to offer the sac- 
rifices. If a professed Christian to-day be- 
lieves that God's favor is worth preserving 
and that he cannot keep it unless he gives up 
[139] 



^i^at (js Cjsjsenttal 



playing games of chance, he would be very 
fooHsh and imprudent not to make the re- 
quired self-denial. If he would rather go to 
heaven when he dies than to go to horse races 
while he lives, and if he honestly thinks he 
cannot do both, he is wise in choosing that 
which he more earnestly desires. But let not 
this selfish prudence of his be ennobled by the 
name of Christian sacrifice. The purpose of 
that sacrifice which is really a part of vital 
Christian activity cannot be to win anything 
for one's self, not even the favor of God or the 
eternal bliss of heaven. 

Again, strange as it may seem, the purpose of 
some personal sacrifices that have been digni- 
fied by the name of Christian, have their real, 
though not apparent purpose, in the propitia- 
tion of men. Many a Christian man has 
limited his freedom, both of thought and of 
action, to meet the demands of some hard- 
shelled, narrow-minded fanatics who have 
mistaken their own prejudiced notions for the 
eternal decrees of God. It is true that the 
apostle Paul enjoined a loving thought for the 
[140] 



"weaker brother" but he did not recommend 
a timorous bondage to the rehgious bigot. 
When one refrains from doing anything con- 
cerning which he has freedom of choice and 
action for fear some of his friends may mis- 
understand and disapprove, he is certainly 
acting within his rights. If he prefers the good 
opinion of these friends to the exercise of his 
Hberty in certain directions, let him make the 
choice according to his preference. But let 
him not believe that he is any better Chris- 
tian for this self-denial. No self-denial which 
seeks only the approval of men can be included 
in the sacrifices that partake of the nature of 
real Christian activity. 

The sacrifice involved in the necessary activity 
of the Christian is the sacrifice demanded by 
love for the purpose of helping someone else. 
Just as Jesus did not ascend Calvary to win 
God's favor or to meet with the approval of 
men, so the true sacrifice of the Christian must 
be purged from all self-seeking motives. 
The nature of the sacrifice that is Christlike is 
not merely a self-denial, it is a self-impartation. 
[141] 



Wi^at i^ e^^mtiaX 



Christians are not just to deny themselves some- 
thing now for some future good by and by, they 
are to give something of themselves to others. 
Christian sacrifice is the natural expression of 
love. The man who has not learned to love 
can know nothing of sacrifice. He who really 
does love need not worry about the hardness of 
the sacrifice, for to him the sacrifice will be 
natural and easy. 

It is a great mistake to talk to the would-be 
Christian of Christianity's cost in terms of sac- 
rifice. It is like trying to compel him to under- 
stand a page of the Hebrew Bible before he has 
learned even the Hebrew alphabet. Teach the 
youthful student of Christianity first the alpha- 
bet of love. Show him the wonderful love of 
God. Picture to him the needs of God's loved 
children whom he can help. Be gentle and 
patient with him until he can apply the lesson 
in simple deeds of kindness and mercy. And 
lo, almost before he knows it, he has come to 
express himself naturally in the terms of Chris- 
tian sacrifice. 

No man can be a truly active Christian who 
[142] 



does not give of himself to make others better. 
He may make the sacrifice in many different 
ways. Something of himself he may give as 
he offers the money which is the product of 
his industry. Something of himself he may 
give in the surrender of the self-indulgence 
which to him would be pleasing. Something 
of himself he may bestow in the unselfish use 
of his time and in the thoughtful, benevolent 
expenditure of his energy. Whoever gives of 
himself in anyway for the good of his neigh- 
bor is engaged in the activity which is truly 
Christian. 

" Who gives of himself with his gift feeds three — 
Himself, his hungering neighbor and me." 

Sec. 3. Christianity and Philanthropy 
Some thinkers have found the complete de- 
scription of the Christian life as taught by Jesus 
to lie in the parable of the Good Samaritan. 
These have sometimes read into the parable 
not only the commendation of acts of sympa- 
thetic service, but also the condemnation of 
all forms of professed personal religion. Jesus 
[143] 



I^l^at i0 Cjs^enttal 



did not bid the inquiring lawyer to imitate 
the priest and the Levite, but to go and do 
hke the Samaritan. Therefore, it is argued, 
he meant to imply that Christians were not to 
be avowed religionists at all, but only helpful 
philanthropists. 

The century in which we are now living, as 
has already been remarked in a preceding 
connection, is one in which this philanthropic 
conception of Christianity is especially pre- 
dominant. Everywhere about us we find men 
who openly claim to have little regard for pro- 
fessed Christianity, but who give much time, 
money and thought to specific forms of phil- 
anthropic and charitable endeavor. Hospitals 
and institutions for the blind, the deaf and the 
dumb ; schools, colleges, libraries, reading rooms 
and gymnasiums ; homes for the aged, the des- 
titute and the fallen ; orphanages, social settle- 
ments and city missions ; — these are only a few 
of the many enterprises for the betterment of 
humanity which receive the generous support 
of thousands of people who do not profess to be 
Christians at all. 

[144] 



To all these home institutions of salvation we 
must also add to-day the evidence of an in- 
creasing interest in foreign missions, and it 
must be remembered that the increase of 
interest in missions is manifestly due to the 
somewhat recent change in the motive of 
missions^. So long as missionaries sought only 
to rescue heathen from an eternal hell they 
received little encouragement from practical 
philanthropists; but when the missionaries 
avowed their purpose to fit heathen people 
for a healthy, intelligent, serviceable life on the 
earth, philanthropists began to rally to their 
support. 

There should be little need here to discuss the 
question of the exact identity of philanthropy 
and Christianity. Christianity has to do with 
all of a man's life; philanthropy with that part 
of his life which is associated with his fellows. 
Christianity concerns itself with the man's re- 
lation to his God as well as to his fellow man, 
and with his relation to himself as well as to 
either. If there were only one man upon the 
face of the earth, that man conceivably could 
[145] 



1^]^at ti8 ^jS^enttal 



still be a Christian though obviously he could 
not be a philanthropist. He could try to be 
actuated by the spirit of him who overcame 
temptations alone in the wilderness and who 
communed with his Father alone on the moun- 
tain side, even though he could not undertake 
a ministry for his fellow men. But this is 
imaginary. So long as there is more than one 
man upon the face of the earth, no one can 
call himself a true Christian unless like Christ 
he loves and serves his brethren. Jesus in the 
parable did not condemn all profession of re- 
ligion, but only its selfish and formal profes- 
sion. 

Had the Levite ministered to the destitute and 
wounded traveler, he would doubtless have 
been commended as was the Samaritan. Else- 
where Jesus emphatically enforced the need of a 
public profession of religion (vide Matt. 10 : 32, 
33) and the only time when he described the 
whole Christian life, he clothed his description 
in the two commandments, of which love to 
man was the subject only of the second. The 
first was, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God." 
[146] 



WW ij3 tl^e tmntial ^ctmtv 

■■ — - — I 1 

The second was like to it, " Thou shalt love thy 
neighbor as thyself." (Mark U: 30, 31.) 
Philanthropy, then, must be considered not as 
identical with Christianity, but as the inevi- 
table expression of Christianity in human rela- 
tionship. We must consider the deed of the 
Good Samaritan as essentially a Christlike 
deed, and we must consider the multitude of 
organized forms of charities and missions as 
so many opportunities for the true Christian to 
express his Christianity in human terms. Phil- 
anthropy is the human language of that religion 
which in its essence is divine. Just as one's 
inner thoughts can be expressed outwardly only 
by words and signs, so one's inner relations with 
the God of love and a Christlike spirit can be 
expressed outwardly only in the human lan- 
guage of philanthropy. 

Sec. 4. The Quest for the Kingdom of God 

When Jesus taught his hearers to seek jfirst 
the Kingdom of God, he made it very clear 
that the primary activity of the Christian life 
had its relation to the service of God as King. 
[147] 



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W}^at tjs €$^mtial 



Unfortunately, however, he did not in this 
instance so clearly define the nature of God's 
Kingdom as to preclude all possibility of mis- 
understanding. Thus, though Christians have 
agreed that the work of Christians is to pro- 
mote God's Kingdom, they have not always 
agreed as to precisely what work will best 
promote it. 

Some have interpreted the Kingdom of God 
to have reference only to a future state of 
existence. They have made the term synony- 
mous with the kingdom of heaven, under- 
standing heaven to signify the spiritual happi- 
ness of those who have been emancipated 
from earthly limitations. To these, to seek 
the Kingdom of God has meant only to seek 
heaven. By logical inference, according to 
this interpretation no man can be a citizen of 
God's Kingdom until after he has died. All, 
therefore, that he needs to do in this state of 
his existence is to fit himself and others for 
post-mortem citizenship. Much as the boy in 
school theoretically devotes himself to the prep- 
aration for citizenship in his country, so men 
[148] 



in this life are to devote themselves only to 
preparation for the life to come. The earthly 
activity of the Christian is thus conceived in 
its last analysis to be unsocial. If he acknowl- 
edges any responsibility for the society in 
which he now lives, it is not a responsibility 
to make the present society better, but only 
to make the present members of society more 
fit for a future existence. 

But while no careful student of the teachings 
of Christ can fail to recognize that he suggested 
more or less definitely a future life, the un- 
prejudiced student will observe that the picture 
of God's Kingdom in heaven is at best very 
dimly outlined, while the conception of God's 
Kingdom upon the earth stands out in boldest 
relief. 

Christ's picture of God's Kingdom is one pic- 
ture. There are not two kingdoms of God, 
one here and one there. But the Kingdom 
here, which constitutes the foreground of the 
picture, insensibly becomes merged into the 
more obscure but perhaps more beautiful lines 
of the distant Kingdom beyond. The true per- 
1,149] 



^l^at t?j Cjsjsential 



spective of Christ's teachings makes the King- 
dom of God upon the earth of primary im- 
portance, though one who views the whole of 
his teachings will catch something of the glory 
dimly outlined in the background beyond the 
distant hills. 

With this picture of Christ before us, we must 
not say that a Christian shall be engaged prin- 
cipally in the preparation either of himself or 
of his fellows for heaven. But, on the other 
hand, we must not forbid him to be interested 
in that which assuredly was a part of Christ's 
teachings. We can neither bid the Christian 
to spurn earthly conditions while he seeks 
heaven, nor to forget heavenly conditions 
while he works upon the earth. It must be 
the one object of the Christian's activity to 
harmonize the earthly with the heavenly. He 
must strive so skilfully to blend the two that 
no man can say, "Here earth ends and there 
begins heaven," but so that all will say, "We 
cannot tell where earthly conditions cease, for 
truly the glory of heaven itself has filled the 
earth." 

[150] 



Wt^at i^ ti^t existential ^ttiUtv 

This is the ideal state for which the true Chris- 
tian must toil, the state of a heaven-like earth. 
The true Christian will strive for heaven, but 
not merely for a future heaven. He will strive 
for a present heaven. He will strive to fulfill 
the petition which the Savior himself taught, 
"Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done upon 
the earth as it is in heaven." 
It follows, therefore, that the Christian will be 
necessarily interested in everything that per- 
tains to earthly conditions. He will work for 
individuals, because individuals are a part of 
society, and because each individual is a 
brother subject of his King. He will be in- 
terested in all that concerns the individual, 
ministering to his body as well as to his soul, 
promoting his intellectual welfare as well as 
his spiritual welfare, serving him on week- 
days as well as on Sundays, by an honest day's 
toil as well as by a religious testimony, in the 
workshop at the time of business as well as in 
the church at the hour of worship. Especially 
will he be interested in that individual who is 
most in need. He will help the man in need 
[151] 



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according to his ability, rejoicing if he can 
but "give a cup of cold water" in the spirit of 
a disciple of Jesus. 

But the Christian, too, will be interested in 
the larger problems of the body of God's chil- 
dren in their relations to each other. He will 
not rest content so long as evil social condi- 
tions remain unrighted. He will lift his voice 
in indignant protest against all forms of le- 
galized injustice and iniquity. He will exercise 
his rights of civil citizenship as one who is as 
well a citizen of the Kingdom divine. He will 
strive so far as in him lies to guard the sanctity 
of the home, to preserve from selfish, political 
encroachments the interests of the school, to 
maintain the purity of the Church, and to pro- 
mote the best Christian welfare of the State. 
His work will be for society as well as for the 
individual, and his work will not be complete 
until all men have become one in Christ even 
as Christ was one with God. 
By the exercise of a dauntless courage and of a 
patient sympathy, by exhortation and by admoni- 
tion^ by precept and by example, the Christian 



I^i^at i?j t\)t tmmtial act(tj(tr 

will strive to make this world the Kingdom of his 
Lord and Savior, And striving for God's King- 
dom here, he will open the doors of heaven 
eternal, both for himself and for those over whom 
God may have given him influence. 



[153] 



JUL 1 191S 



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